How a joined-up approach has enhanced TSB Bank’s reward programme

Building a centralised reward hub has helped TSB Bank to boost engagement, improve its employee value proposition, and provide its workforce with an enhanced user experience, according to Will Rayden, director of reward and performance at TSB.

“It’s a significant change that lets us do lots of different things,” he said. “Offering total reward statements and introducing single sign-on has enabled us to deliver clear information to all 6,000 employees for the first time.”

Here, we explain how we have worked with TSB to move the bank from a paper-based system, available to a limited audience, to a consolidated digital experience employees can access both at work and at home.

A long-lasting partnership

We have been working with TSB on its employee value proposition since 2013, shortly after it became a separate division within Lloyds Banking Group.

In that time, we have performed a variety of functions, including administering unique benefits such as TSB’s Matched Learning Fund, as well as pensions, share plans and flexible benefits. In more recent years, we have also supported the streamlining of TSB’s HR and payroll systems and, in 2021, the rollout of a new integrated reward hub.

“When employees visit the reward portal, they can view their flexible benefits, their total reward statements, their pensions and investments, and their annual pay round letters, all in the same place,” Rayden said.

“From what was once a disparate set of sites, Equiniti has allowed us to put it all together seamlessly and in one place. It has gone down really well, with lots of people engaging more with the platform and at different times in the annual life cycle – the response has been fantastic.”

An adaptable and accessible solution

Adaptability and flexibility are key to successful employee benefit provision in 2022.

“It’s important to make everything as flexible as possible and to keep your offer fresh to ensure high levels of attraction and staff retention,” Rayden said. “Our package is currently fairly traditional, but we just improved our parental leave offer to 20 weeks for both parents, which puts us very much ahead of the game.”

Accessibility is also crucial; we know, for example, that simply removing the need for a password massively increases engagement levels.

As such, as well as supporting TSB’s drive for greater flexibility, we are also helping to introduce a single sign-on process that allows the bank’s employees to easily log on to the reward portal from anywhere – using desktops, laptops or mobiles.

“Single sign-on makes it so much easier to use the tools available,” Rayden added.

An affiliated communications strategy

TSB recognises that effective communications will play a vital role in maintaining engagement levels with the new reward hub.

“However good something is, you still need to push people to keep looking at it,” Rayden said. “That’s why we are trying to get into a rhythm with our communications; for example, by communicating the pay round at the start of the year, refreshing the total reward statements in April, running summer shares or pension reminders campaigns, and promoting annual flexible benefits in the latter part of the year – all through the reward portal.”

At EQ, we are also working on offering greater access to elements such as financial education content to those who prefer to engage with the platform via personal devices, while continuing to prioritise the security of the solution.

A greater emphasis on recognition

Recognition is becoming increasingly important for employers of all kinds.

Since moving away from performance ratings in 2020 to focus on the quality of the performance conversation, one way the bank is fostering a stronger recognition culture is through a new recognition programme, using social points-based recognition.

“We are not there yet, but we would like to integrate this [recognition programme] into our reward portal to provide a further seamless element of the reward and recognition journey,” Rayden added.

At our end, meanwhile, we are exploring how to amplify the effect of such schemes by integrating recognition rewards into an individual’s total reward package, and look forward to helping TSB to continue to meet changing reward requirements via its integrated reward portal.

The author is Tim Brook, head of engagement & platforms at EQ HR Solutions (Equiniti).

This article is provided by EQ HR Solutions (Equiniti).