A global challenge
In 2021, Cressida Sergeant, Chief Commercial Officer, took on responsibility for Traveltek’s people agenda. She immediately recognised a number of challenges, many of which were around culture and employee morale.
Cressida was on the lookout for a solution which would enable rewarding and peer-to-peer recognition on a global level. She’s a big believer in the power of appreciation, saying:
“Compensation is a big part of things, but if you were to just throw money at people for doing a good job — that’s transactional and doesn’t create that culture of appreciation. And when you have challenging times, if you simply have a transactional relationship, you won’t get that ‘heart and soul’ element of people caring about the company and each other.”
Perkbox’s reward and recognition solution was specifically designed for dispersed workforces, and our mission is all about helping companies align their people with their purpose. This made us a great fit for Traveltek and the plans Cressida had.
“We looked around at a lot of the tools that were out there and I was really impressed by what I saw with Perkbox. It was clear that it was a global solution that could fix a lot of our challenges, especially around communication and peer-to-peer recognition.”
Complementing the culture
Cressida and her team were quick to realise that, rather than being a standalone part of their Employee Value Proposition (EVP), the Perkbox platform could complement everything else they were doing.
For example, one of their key initiatives revolves around the company ‘Culture Squad’. They’re responsible for running fortnightly company updates, and dedicate a section to all the people who’ve been recognised via our platform. Within the first 9 months, over 550 people had received recognition.
“Recognition shouldn’t just come from the top,” says Cressida. It should come from all angles across the company, and when you get that right, it's amazing what it does to the culture.
“Since we put the tool in our business, it has been a game changer for us. The recognition that we’ve seen with Perkbox has been quite fundamental because it’s changed that culture. It isn’t just about me or managers saying well done. It’s about that peer to peer recognition.”
Driving values at every opportunity
We mentioned earlier how we’re passionate about helping companies align their people with their purpose. Often, a big part of this is pushing your company values, and making sure employees know the types of behaviours you want to encourage.
Traveltek’s values — Integrity, Agility, Tenacity and Simplicity — are linked to every single recognition an employee receives on the Perkbox platform, with people choosing which value(s) the recipient has lived up to.
The impact of this hasn’t been lost on Cressida.
“I think the highlight for me was seeing so many people go into the system. Whenever they say thank you to people, or they acknowledge something good that someone’s done, they tag the values in there — and that's something that's come internally from the teams.”
Using employees to shine a spotlight
Cressida and her team have continued to involve employees in the recognition process, which also helps uncover the unsung heroes.
“From an administration perspective, Perkbox makes it easy for me to see the top people that have won in those value categories. But one of the things that our Culture Squad came up with was making sure we don't lose some of those people that might not be at the forefront. So we're trying to balance it with employee voting, as well as some of the managers stepping in.
“We therefore created eight quarterly awards around our values and got all the employees to vote for the winners. We use Perkbox to drive that quarterly event and then we do different activities with the teams that win.”
A range of global reward options
When it comes to rewarding, Traveltek can send their employees our currency-agnostic points, which they can save or immediately spend on our vast catalogue of rewards. Giving them this choice and freedom means they’ll always get something they value.
One of Cressida’s first acts was sending Reward points to staff in India for Diwali, showcasing the global nature of the tool.
In the first six months of using Reward points, Traveltek has seen almost 75% of recipients spend their rewards, on things ranging from food delivery services to cinema tickets and charity donations
Sky high numbers
A successful reward and recognition strategy isn’t just good for company culture — it has a tangible impact on all the important numbers. We’ll let Cressida take it from here!
“Every single metric at Traveltek has gone up since we got Perkbox. Flow metrics from a tech perspective, eNPS score, company revenue — it’s all gone up.
“We run regular surveys across the business and Perkbox consistently comes up as something the teams find as a valuable tool. We want to give our employees as much support as we can and Perkbox has been a wonderful tool to help us on our journey to improve our culture as much as possible.”
