Brilliant everybody it’s Neil jenkinson here as you can see I’m the regional manager for Bieber in the north uh Scotland and Northern Ireland um in a slightly different webinar today uh we’re introducing one of our associate members to you um our associate members are on board to try and assist uh you to
Run your business slightly differently and maybe have value for you um and our associate today as you can see from the screen is Viv up and Chris last their commercial and Strate strategy director uh is with us today to present to you um all I’m going to ask again guys is
Normal housekeeping rules if you do have a question for Chris please po to me uh either to all panelists or to me privately I’ll hold on to it till the very end we won’t interrupt Chris while he’s doing his presentation and then we’ll just have a brief Q&A at the end
Of the session so yeah without further Ado Mr lust my good friend thank you for putting this on for us today and over to you mate and I’ll chat with you later brilliant thanks Neil thanks uh well good morning everyone thanks for joining me today um firstly
I’m from Swansea so not only will you have trouble understanding my delet Welsh tones I also have a cold to compound things a bit further so if I’m coughing spluttering or sneezing please bear with me and uh send some love my way because I’m feeling a little bit Ry
Today um I’ve been in the industry and connected to Bieber Brokers for over 10 years yeah over 10 years now um working directly with insurers and Brokers to support their employee value proposition and on the other side as well supporting Brokers to differentiate their schemes with added value benefits something
Different such as discounts rewards and member benefits um so I’m hoping today we bring some useful knowledge to the table um and hope hopefully sort of help to retain your Valu colleagues in what is becoming a difficult period in the employee value proposition space um there’s a couple of learning
Points I wanted to cover off today um so without further Ado we we’ll we’ll kind of explore why employee retention is business critical as a metric why culture is intrinsically linked to retention of Staff or colleagues uh best practice and solutions that will engage employees and lead to high
Performance and why proactive employee well-being should be at the heart of retention and why so many businesses are getting on board things are changing um so hopefully some of the information you will resonate with you guys uh attracting and retaining employees so some stats for you um 96%
Of employees are set to look for a new job this year wow that’s a huge start and uh for those that those of you involved with people management and running businesses it costs an average of 122,000 to uh replace an employee and that could be recruitment fees it could
Be training fees uh and other attraction metrics to bring people to businesses and 75% of employees say their benefits keep them on board with an employer so that’s quite an interesting stat as well now those three put together are huge and it’s still very much an employees
Market covid set a bit of a precedence uh for demanding more from employers and I think that precedent has continued in the last three or four years so my question to you is is a simple one would it be better to deliver a more meaningful benefits package in addition
To the salaries we pay or do we pay 12K every time we need to replace a disengaged employee so have a think about that for a minute and then at the end I’m sure you’ll um you’ll have some questions and some statements and some contributions you’d like to make and we
Can discuss that um at the appropriate time um key workplace challenges for employers so I’m sure all of you are seeing some of these uh effects in your business some of you might be seeing all of them but absenteeism building a strong work culture supporting cost of living pressure providing effective
Mental health support retention and recruitment Employee Engagement and engaging employees in Su sustainability so are you seeing any of these issues cost of living stands out for me because it doesn’t matter whether you earn 25 Grand a year or you earn 100 Grand a year whatever you’re buying
You’re paying more for it so your money’s not your money’s not going as far as it used to as an employee we’re also recruiting gened employees now and that’s a different ball game so back when you know many of us uh entered work for the first time uh
Going back all of those years ago um our friendship Network works now are often built up from employees um and friends that we built when we first started work so go into the pub on a Thursday night going bowling you know going out for meals going for quizzes after work in
Town those types of things when you work hybridly or remotely it’s much harder to engage an audience and and a and a and a business and a Workforce um with those kind of you know diff different sort of Engagement routes available to employees and particularly when they’re younger um
Starting work for the first time these opportunities to build relationships and friendships are no longer there and that sometimes has a negative effect on um on engagement in the business so mental health uh support is fundamental particularly for those gen Ed employees and others um and it’s not
Just about an EAP anymore so so for many years and I’ve worked in this industry for many years an EAP was very much a box ticking exercise you know what are you doing to support your employees mental health well we’ve got an EAP tick the Box fantastic we’ve done our job um
But it’s about wider mechanisms that are pre preventative before the point of Crisis that we see now um engagement is another one I’d like to draw on um is huge look how differently we operate compared to January 2020 in preco so hybrid working home workking we all live
On teams I don’t know what your Diaries are like for most of the week but mine pretty much evolves around teams or traveling to London so how effective is your engagement strategy as um people champions in your business or business owners have a think about that for a
Minute from a Viva perspective and and my perspective we see well-being broken down into four pillars uh emotional physical financial and Community well-being is the fastest growing area of employe benefits in the UK so it’s really important that you consider the strategy you have and making sure you
Get it correct the first time around because it will have a positive effect on your business from recruitment right through to retention and engagement there’s a stat there from cipd as well which is I thinking about wanted to draw out Financial well-being and why it’s important um many of which on this slide
Is uh sort of directly linked to cost of living and the crisis everybody’s facing into so three and four employees agree that their mental health would improve if their employer gave them Financial well-being support and benefits now that could mean a number of things but there’s a number of benefits available
That you could offer to your colleagues that would support that uh reduction 11.8 million employees say their financial situation affects their ability to be pro pro productive at work so again as people Champions and business owners um we look at productivity and we look at how we can
Find marginal gains to support there that’s a really interesting startat so ask yourself you know if you if you’ve got benefits how successful they are look at the data um find out who’s using them find out what benefit they’re getting from them and then sort of draw your own conclusions but really
Meaningful value here is about reducing monthly bills and costs discounts on food shopping and purchases um to to stretch a net pay salary sacrifice um some of you may already offer it some of you don’t but offering salary salary sacrifice schemes can be a real benefit for employees that help to help to
Stretch their salary further and organizations can save some money from it as well um making new items more affordable and financial advice to support all of your employees so collectively across these uh these five decals there’s quite a few things there that could really support employees from a financial well-being
Perspective uh well-being so why pro uh why proactivity beats reactivity um mental health seems to be the buzz phrase now I suppose doesn’t it and and it affects everybody publicly um in reality it’s always affected everybody I think we are now uh getting better at showing it how it affect us
And also talking about it more which I think is a really positive thing um we have a long way to go but the days of keeping things to yourself are slowly diminishing so as business owners and leaders people leaders um being able to encourage employees with supportive
Solutions helps them and then helps the business so 18.6 million working days lost last year to sickness and many of those days are linked to minor illness and stress so I have to think about that for a minute how does that affect your business how many days last year did you
Lose uh to to minor illness and stress and how some strategies could be easily implemented in your business or improved um to reduce that number recognition I think this is a really important one and reward is such an interesting word so I mean to many people reward generally means money but
How valid do you feel in work um that’s an interesting question how valid do you think your colleagues feel you work hybrid you work remotely not everyone sees your contribution the little things that make a business tick they used to be really important and those little things now have become beu and they
Don’t get noticed anymore so you don’t get the thank yous that you used to get for the very small contributions that really drive the business forward building a positive recognition strategy delivers marginal gains from your colleagues and when people say thank you it makes you want to deliver it
Certainly does for me anyway um yesterday I was at the um I was at Westminster I was representing uh cycle to work as an industry as the chair of the cycle to work Alliance um it was quite a quite an important meeting it was my first delve into sort of politics
Really but at the end of the day my CEO was actually on that call and um I got a a high five on our our recognition platform for it and everybody in the business on it it really made me feel warm it made me feel sort of um sort of
Nice and and I thought it was a really nice thing to to do and everybody in the business saw it so that drove me on it made me want to do more so think about that uh and I think you’ll instantly see a shift in productivity through the
Business who doesn’t appreciate a thank you were a well done it doesn’t have to be a voucher it doesn’t have to be a bonus it doesn’t have to be you know financially oriented it could literally just be a well done that all of the business sees and that helps to to to
Drive productivity positivity and marginal gains across the business I’ve put together a couple of tips for retention um many of these things get forgotten about I think um but they’re as old as time um and very transferable regardless of the industry not all of the not all of them cost the
Business lots of money either um you know a simple thank you goes a long way but you know I want you to think about these these things as people champions in your business and also business owners um Implement a strong on boarding strategy so when you’re bringing new
People into your business think about how you on board them are they getting the very best onboarding experience and how can you make it better build an open and positive workplace culture you know really remember that lots of employees work remote Hy hybridly hybridly I’m not
Sure that’s a word from a hybrid uh you know situation now things have changed so so being open and positive and inclusive is really important uh encourage team building show appreciation we talked about that a minute ago with with reward and recognition providing a variety of benefits not every employee is going to
Take up every benefit but you know employees will take up different benefits that are relevant to them but really think about how you communicate that to the to to your Workforce and how you engage people because things like salary sacrifice many people wouldn’t even know what it means how it works
What the benefit is and I think really simplifying how that benefit gets communicated could be a really interesting way of driving usage um offer cost of living support so I’m sure many people have have provided pay rises in the last 18 months to support but what else can you do can you
You know can you give discounts off shopping you know 5% of Tesco Sainsbury’s AAS the things that stretch net pay really simple ways of supporting the cost of living crisis and making people’s money go further invest in tra and development again you know a real sort of retention uh pieces is training
And development the more you can train staff up and colleagues up uh the more likely they are to stay with you because it encourages development uh encourage employees to voice their opinions um that’s a really important one because you want people to to contribute and have a say uh and
Collectively Drive the business forward uh and everybody’s got an opinion not everybody’s right um at all times but it’s important that people have a a route that they can express their opinions and you know concerns or or positive outputs show a clear direction for progression and that’s linked to Career
Progression you know and also business progression you know make sure you’re communicating the threee the five year the 10 year plan for the business so that people are on board with it and buy into it and they know that they’re part of that journey and also reward hard
Work a simple thank you does go a long way so the benefits to your organization uh help to build an engage productive Workforce reduce employee absenteeism um preventative and in the moment mental health support is really important get to those uh crisis points you know early make sure that you’ve got
Support mechanisms in place that prevent it going all the way um and that will really help to drive the business help staff with cost of living while generating organizational savings so that’s really about salary sacrifice I suppose there and how you can offer employees products and services that also generate savings for the
Organization that then crystallizes a budget that you can then reuse in your reward budget to actually give employees more recruit the best talent and imp uh improve employee retention and add value to your service and provides extra stickiness so I’ve I’ve almost come to the end of
My presentation really so so I’m sure Jen you’d be pleased that it’s much quicker than the uh the half an hour he he did give me um today we’ve talked about the cost of living um and also a disengaged Workforce the 12K per head to recruit um you know and the reduction in
Productivity linking the values and culture of the business to your recognition strategy the levers that drive the business forward easily through the power of a thank you best practice and solutions to help and the data to go with it remember data is really important so you know you can’t
You can’t manage something if you can’t measure it so when you’re looking at benefits and reward and recognition really drive down into the data to see how it’s uh how it’s affecting the business in a positive or A negative way and that gives you an idea of how to
Change things um and then when you bring all of these things together the business benefits marketly it doesn’t need to cost the Earth either um there’s lots of solutions out there which are very affordable um and often it can be just a rejig of a strategy and and you
Know ensuring everybody from the leadership team buys into uh what you’re doing from a you know a recruitment a reten and an engagement perspective um and then finally we we’ve covered off why wellbeing is now crucial it’s more crucial than ever it’s become an employer’s responsibility to support
Their employees with well-being so you really need to start buying into it if you’re not already and you know looking at solutions that are preventative uh not at point of Crisis so have a think about that as well um yeah thank thanks Neil I was
Just going to say one one more thing um you’re probably wondering how or why I’m qualified to share the stats I have today and the content you’ve seen um I’ve worked in employee benefits and well-being for over 16 years I’m chair of the cycle to work Alliance and I help
To run a business that supports two and a half million employees across the UK so we really go deep into it um 80% of the NHS use the solutions we’ve put together um and if it can help NHS colleagues um they can help colleagues who work in Insurance engineering
Teaching you know anything really it’s all very transferable because everybody has the same problems um and then below you can just see a screenshot of some of the businesses we work with um so there’s some great brands on there and then some of the solutions we
Provide as well but um Neil will share the deck with you I’m sure Chris yeah that was going to be my uh my first uh Point really is obviously anybody that joined us late uh the recording will be online in a little while Chris if you just whiz over uh the presentation to
Ruth yeah and then obviously anybody wants to get in touch they can do obviously we’ve seen your contact details there mate excuse me a brilant excuse me a second I’m sure there’s some questions and some statements and some uh conversation to be had as well now perfect thank you Chris guys are
There any questions for Chris um from the floor obviously you know if it’s something you’d like to reach out to Chris and the vivv team uh you obviously by all means you can do that privately their contact information is on the bber website but obviously please make a not
Of Chris’s details here Chris well I mean from from a obviously you’re dealing with not just Insurance Brokers you’re dealing with many many businesses yeah is the number one sort of approach from a if you like a business owner for for their staff and what they caring
About is it is it the old you get 5% off at quick fit or is it is it more the if you like the well-being side of things now I think it’s a mix of both to be honest with you Neil um you know a lot of the old more traditional benefits
Like shopping discounts you know I mean I I use them myself you know 5% off at Saints breur we spent 100 pound a week in sains breur that’s a240 a year saving I’m stretch of anet pay with it’s a really basic one uh and I probably sound a little bit like
Martin Lewis here but um you know that’s a traditional benefit and I think if you communicate a strategy like that really effectively employees buy into it and it’s all about quantifying the savings they can make um then you know salary sacrifice you seeing electric cars becoming much more uh prevalent in in in
Businesses now and on the roads there’s huge savings to be made there so you know we support organizations with uh with EV schemes where employees can save up to you know up to a, pound even more per year employers can save the you know save similar amounts of money as well
With the offset of Ni in pensions and then well-being as well so you know as I said it affects everybody people are talking about it more people are showing showing their cards and showing their hand a little bit more now and I think the world we live in now you know it’s
It’s all about becoming preventative how can we how can we you know prevent people from getting to a point of Crisis um we run our own EAP um we’ve got our own sort of you know um counseling function where where where it’s telephonic or we do face to-face
Counseling uh and it’s clinically LED and you know I obviously I can’t go into to detail about the you know the call the calls and everything else that that that I’m sure our counselors get but what we want to do is is is get to the point
Where employees are not having to call up about these issues so how can we prevent that happening and and that’s you know Financial well-being emotional support that’s physical um physical well-being as well you know things like gym discounts healthy eating lots of things all add up to some someone’s
Wellbeing and I think that’s really important to get across and having really simple ways that employees can engage when they want to um you know there’s probably another webinar on AI as well that you could bring in you and how you can support with that but that’s
Probably for another day but um but yeah it’s probably a mix of all of those things I think Neil and then bringing it all together with a really effective communication strategy yeah you know to sure everyone is fully aware of what’s on offer how it can benefit them because
You know you might not know about electric cars and the benefits you can make through salac but you might know about the discount of ch um but in reality you know buying a a golf id4 through a salary sacrifice scheme could actually save you over ,000 pound a year
And that that’s more beneficial to you sure discount you know yeah excellent M we’ve been challenged a little bit Martin I love I love the question actually um earlier in your presentation you you produced a a 96% stat uh about the number number of
People in tent to look for a job yes is that right so we’ve just been challenged to say do we know actually how many might have actually follow and left the business um because Martin’s in a very fortunate position only had one out of his 10 people leav in
23 wow um I don’t have that stat to hand I’m afraid but I’d be happy to follow up with Martin directly and um and and discuss that in more detail I’m sure we have those stats stats and stats and stats aren they Chris you obviously I
Think everybody sort of you know the way the I suppose the way the world is and we’re all under extreme pressure to keep the roof over our heads and pay the bills and everything else I think you know people will look for a um an opportunity if if it’s better for their
Own family and everything else moving forward I suppose but yeah if you could look into that for me that’d be that’d be really interesting actually because Martin will follow that one up and I like that I like the fact that we do get Challenge from the floor um just for a
Little bit more meat on the bone as such so Mar I appreciate you you’re reaching out with that question thank you I think the the you know the other thing to highlight you particularly with insurance brokers is some of these benefits like the discount scheme um is very transferable so what we’ve done
With some Brokers is actually add this into schemes so it helps to cover the cost of an insurance policy you know I think in you know if you read the media and Twitter insurance policies you know that they’re going up in price uh and possibly rightly so um and and how do
You address that how can you make it more affordable and add more value as part of an insurance policy and things like a discount scheme you know where you can save 200 quid a year at sa bre helps to cover the cost of somebody’s policy whether that’s drone insurance or
Whether it’s house insurance or whatever it is you know it’s it’s a transferable benefit that can still you know in different markets help to make people’s money go further yeah thanks mate thank you I don’t know whether I should then say and there are other uh supermarkets
Available cuz you mentioned say about 33 times now I don’t know whether he he in shares of him or something I don’t know I get my neor point s that’s all I’ll say thanks buddy um guys obviously short session today but I mean I for me Chris has hit the mark he’s obviously
Explained everything out there about retention and what was the point of the session today so I’m delighted Chris thank you for for putting that on for us guys out there in uh viewer land are there any further questions for myself and Chris before we call the session to
A halt um like I say you will be able to read and sorry look at this the uh the slides and listen in again um later today I’ll get Ruth on the case when I send her over the recording Chris if you can just whiz the presentation over
That’ be superb thank you mate yeah please do connect with me on LinkedIn as well if you see any value there yeah thanks mate um any more for anym as they saying uh wherever they say that no I think going call it a day Chris thanks thanks I didn’t realiz you under
The K mate that’s very good of you very good of you to get through uh the session feeling not a million percent so what’s up man thanks yeah thank you for everybody out there listening in obviously a nice short session today so have a great rest
Of your day I hope uh your work day goes well and we’ll uh see you again very very soon all the best guys thanks a lot see you later than take care