Transforming employee engagement with custom experience-based rewards

“We focus a lot of our time as a leadership team understanding performance, not results. If we focus on delivering performance, the results will follow.”

Andi Hirons, People Director at The Grand Brighton

Overview

Mo worked with The Grand Brighton throughout 2019 and helped launch a very successful reward and recognition scheme for all employees.

It was vital for our team to understand more about how the team at The Grand Hotel Brighton approach, consider and launch new initiatives to support their strategy. The first thing was getting complete buy-in at an executive level. With this initial commitment comes the next important phase – validation by employees.

By getting this validation from a broad group that represents the overall employee voice, the People team were then in the best possible position to launch a successful reward and recognition scheme that not only has top-down blessing from the business but also has validation from employees that the initiative is needed and fit for purpose.

Background

In exploring reward and recognition, the key to the solution (or scheme design) was the option to have “custom rewards” on Mo that focussed on what is meaningful to the different types of people that work at The Grand.

They knew that the team didn’t just want voucher-based rewards or cash-based rewards. They wanted experiences. The rewards given to employees for exceptional effort and contribution are all experience-based. And a large portion of those experiences (and the most desirable) are based within the hotel!

Andi Fletcher, Group People Director, shared: “The most used experiences are those in the hotel. And that makes me really happy! That someone would take the vouchers we’ve given them and choose to come here for dinner.”

Results

The fact that employees are choosing rewards that are based within the hotel demonstrates how connected their people are to the brand. Choosing to come back to “work” to go for lunch or for cocktails shows that they feel part of it and that they’re proud of that.

The custom reward options are constantly growing. Annual cinema tickets, National Trust membership, gym memberships, and new dining experiences in the hotel have all been added. These are constantly reviewed by the team and by the wider employer group.

70%

Employee retention reached

3

Industry-Leading Awards in 2019 – Best Employer, Team of the Year & Best Employee Engagement Programme

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