Introduction
Havas People has over 150 employees across the globe. The company has offices in the UK, USA and Australia, as well as remote employees across the globe.
One of these is Rebecca Zoli, People & Talent Advisor, who’s based in Italy. She explained how reward and recognition was a core part of her people initiatives, but the challenge was linking this with the Havas People company values:
- Be Brave
- Champion Inclusion
- Make It Collaborative
- Take Pride
Rebecca also wanted to make rewards applicable to employees across all locations.
Her team had started putting things in place back in 2020, but the arrival of Perkbox — which enables rewards and recognitions to be linked with values — took this up a level.
"We always try to have some sort of system in place to reward and recognise our employees. [But] it was difficult to keep the values in people’s minds every day. We decided to implement Team of the Month and Employee of the Month awards and we now use the Perkbox platform to link these awards to our values. We also give over 3,000 Reward points to whoever wins Employee of the Month, and over 1,000 Reward points to everyone in the Team of the Month."
International inclusivity
It’s also important to equally celebrate people from different departments and locations. Perkbox’s location-agnostic platform provides a consistent experience for every employee, by allowing people to recognise each other no matter where they’re based.
This has been a big boost to the culture and morale at Havas People, as Rebecca expands on:
"When we speak about teams, we don’t just think about a group of people working in one area. We talk mostly about project teams — people in different departments and locations working on the same client or projects. So while the majority of our employees are in the UK, our winners for Team of the Month are a mixture of people across different countries. It makes everyone feel like they are one team, regardless of where they are.
We’re trying to be inclusive as much as possible, so the team of 15 people in New York doesn’t feel detached from the rest of the company. That’s where Perkbox is great."
Rewarding for every location and lifestyle
Rebecca mentioned how important it is to back up recognitions with meaningful rewards. As the business grew, this became trickier, but Perkbox’s global rewarding tool — the first of its kind — enables them to have something in place.
Rebecca can send Reward points directly to her employees, or allocate points to managers to send to their teams. Employees can then spend them on a range of rewards from our catalogue, or save them up for a bigger reward.
Over 95% of the Havas People workforce has received Reward points since the tool launched, with a near 50-50 split between employees choosing to spend immediately vs save.
Rebecca says the fact that it’s truly global is exactly what her business needs.
"When you have a team or employee winning an award in, say, New York, the value of a reward through payroll is not the same. Now that we are expanding globally, Perkbox has really allowed us to reward everyone."
Previously, trying to manually find rewards that work for everybody in a diverse workforce was both complex and costly. The introduction of Reward points has removed this headache for Rebecca and her team
"For Christmas, we used to send people a hamper. But obviously the challenge was finding suppliers in all the different locations we have, and all the costs that come with it. And then thinking ‘what if that person is allergic to this?’, or ‘what if they don’t like what’s in the hamper?’
With Perkbox, we can send points to everyone and people can decide what they want to use it on… [This is better] than receiving something which they appreciated, but might not have been what they wanted.
When we announced this at our monthly agency catch-up... people were really happy with that. It’s really making a difference to how they perceive the rewards we are sending them."
Employee-driven recognitions
Rebecca reveals that the categories that Havas People employees are celebrated for are diverse, going beyond just the Team and Employee of the Month awards,
"We also have things such as Wendy’s Winner (Wendy is our CFO) and end of year celebrations such as Big-hearted Award, Positive Energy, Best/Worst while on a call moment. In the last 12 months, a total of 109 employees have received recognition through one of these awards."
The Havas People team is also keen to give their employees a role in many of the awards, by asking them to nominate colleagues. To emphasise how important the company values are, Rebecca explains that the winners — picked by the leadership team — are judged on the quality rather than quantity of nominations.
"Before our monthly meeting, the CEO sits with the managing partner and they go through the nominations. The winners are chosen not because of the number of nominations the team or employee received, but the meaning behind it and how they connect to our values. It’s quite nice to see how people are really engaged and how much they want to show how great their colleagues and teams are."
Easy and instant administration
As well as offering choice to employees, rewarding through Perkbox brings simplicity to employers. Rebecca says having everything in one place has made her life “much easier”, adding:
"Having a global team, I deal with the New York team, the Italian team, the Irish team, the Australian team. Instead of setting up 5 different rewards through payroll, I can now do it myself. All I have to do is top up our pot, and whenever we need to send something to an employee in Sydney or New York or Dublin, or wherever, I can do it and it takes me seconds."
In for the long haul
With a 100% activation rate, it’s clear that Havas People employees are engaged and bought into Perkbox. Combine this with the fact it’s a truly global platform, and you can see why Rebecca wants to continue using it for her reward and recognition needs.
"It’s been three years and people are really happy using the system…Having one platform that works for so many countries is very unique, so it’s definitely something we want to keep for the future.
Whatever type of reward we want to give, we want to use Perkbox because it makes such a difference to our employees."
