How Paul baked a winning recipe for recognition and reward

The French bakery is building a team spirit that enables all employees to celebrate each other in an engaging way

One of the core values at French-owned Paul is ‘Work Together’. The company believes that anything is possible with strong and lasting employee relationships based on listening, trust, and mutual respect.

The bakery and patisserie business employs more than 500 people in the UK who work together across 31 high street shops, a production unit and the UK head office.

A few years ago, Paul’s HR team decided to drive its Work Together value across the whole of the workforce with more motivational recognition and reward that builds camaraderie.

Flexible and fun solution

Previously, the company only gave out rewards for employee of the year or at Christmas. It decided to introduce more regular and instant reward and recognition, so that all colleagues could nominate each other for a great job at any time. It also wanted to support this with a process that is quick, easy, and straightforward.

To make this happen, Paul uses the Edenred Compliments Select digital platform. This enables it to send out reward vouchers the same day. Employees can redeem the vouchers quickly and spend their reward at hundreds of retail and leisure outlets on whatever they choose.

“We also wanted to have some fun,” says Beatrix Toronyicza, Office Manager for Paul, who administers the company’s HR systems and is responsible for implementing its recognition and reward scheme.

“Whenever a colleague’s nomination for a reward is approved, we send them a branded rubber duck that relates to one of our three core values. They then send us a picture of themselves with their duck to trigger the reward, and we post the picture on our internal social network. We wanted to create a bit of a buzz around our rewards – and it’s worked.”

Creating visibility

As a result of these efforts, the number of rewards that Paul gives to colleagues has grown significantly over the past year. The scheme has also encouraged employees to think more about what their colleagues are doing.

“It’s about creating visibility for rewards. When people see the photos on the social network, they think: “I know someone who deserves that”. We’ve also had lots of feedback that people like the digital vouchers. They appreciate how quicky they can use them, and that we’re not just adding a financial reward to pay that soon disappears.”

“Ultimately, we want people to feel that we care about them and recognise the effort they are putting in to support the team. They are much more likely to stay with us if they feel that way.”