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16 May 2019
by Rebecca Patton

Secrets of success: Edward Okpiabhele, Head of Performance & Reward at J. Murphy & Sons Limited

Edward Okpiabhele, head of performance at J.Murphy & Sons Limited, foresees reward having even more focus on the whole employee wellbeing proposition in the future.

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How did you end up in a reward career? 
I  think most people ask the question did you choose HR or did HR choose you? I would have to say I think HR chose me. 

I took part in a management training programme with British American Tobacco. As part of that, I spent a year in a different HR specialism. In my fourth year I went into a reward analyst role and during the whole programme it was this role that I enjoyed the most. 

However, after the year I didn’t move into another reward role for some time.  I got a job at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority as a HR consultant, which was very much a reward focused role and my next role after that was a pure reward role with Tate & Lyle. 

What is the most unexpected thing you have been asked to do in a reward role? 
There have been some quite unexpected things I’ve been asked to do, but one of the most significant was when I was at British American Tobacco as a management trainee. I had to accompany my manager to explain a change of policy to a group of employees, but my manager told me on the day of the meeting that she couldn’t go and I had to deliver this message alone. 

The message was about a change that would have a significant impact on these employees benefits and they were quite upset about it.  I’d never had to deal with a situation like that – but it was a very good learning experience for me. It really taught me that when structuring and delivering messages to employees I have to be able to put myself in their shoes. 

What is your biggest reward success, and how did you achieve it? 
When I joined Tate & Lyle Sugars as the compensation and benefits manager for Europe the company had just been bought by ASR Group. I was tasked with bringing the European reward proposition in line with what the Group wanted and make it a global strategy.

One of the things I did was to brand our whole benefits offering and we came up with this name “sweet rewards”.  That just caught fire, it was so successful – the phrase was on everyone’s lips. We had this saying “sweet rewards, proud to reward”. 

The engagement with the whole benefits platform was quite high – around 45 per cent of our staff engaged - just as a result of raising the profile of our offering and getting people to talk about it. It was probably the most successful thing I have ever done around reward branding and it had such a huge impact in the organisation that we were planning to adopt it globally. 

What do you see as the future focus for reward? 
From what I see in reward, there will become an even stronger link between reward and wellbeing. 

The focus will be on how organisations fashion their reward proposition, so that it not only gives employees an income at the end of the month, but also looks after the whole of an employee’s wellbeing, from financial to mental and physical health.