We’ve had our shoulder to the wheel during the Covid crisis to adapt our employee benefits platform and add new content as the needs of existing and new clients changed.
As businesses look to the next phase – recovery – it’s a good time to pause and share some of the lessons that we learned about what clients have needed from us and our platform. We also wanted to share some of our experiences too.
We grabbed a half hour with our Director, Niall Munro, to chat about what we learned over the past year and what we can take forward. Here are some thoughts from Niall.
FS: In what ways has the platform helped clients to keep in touch with remote and furloughed workers?
NM: Clients have really embraced the messaging side to keep in touch with their team. The platform has been a crucial communication tool for sharing messages on Covid safety and keeping everyone connected.
They’ve also been using the survey tool to create fast instant surveys to seek information and feedback.
We’ve been doing a lot of upgrades at cost for clients so they could facilitate messaging capability.
FS: How have digital tools helped HR teams manage their benefits plans during the Covid crisis?
NM: Having the flexibility to add new benefits has been so important. Clients have been able to add options for employees to sign up for new ‘at home’ services and support including Covid tests, health screening and cancer tests.
We’ve also seen an increasing number of creative, financial services and software businesses sign up. Especially SMEs with fewer than 100 employees because they weren’t all sitting together in the office anymore so they really wanted something to reinforce what they offered and add new benefits.
Clients that have furloughed employees have been able to give them continued access to the platform and their core flex benefits.
FS: How have businesses been showing their team members that they are still valued?
Clients have had unlimited access to the platform to keep in touch. Senior management teams have been really creative in the ways that they let their team know that they are still front of mind and they care. For example, some have put together pop-up videos to send personalised messaging to the workforce.
Rewarding and thanking the team is really important to us too. We reward our team throughout the year for their hard work and at Christmas, everybody received vouchers to treat themselves.
FS: How has the Flex Genius team adapted to remote working during the Covid crisis?
NM: We’ve been very concerned about our remote workers, and just like our clients there’s been a lot of activity around Employee Assistance Programmes to give them the support they need.
Some of our clients have also started to open up the office in a Covid-secure way to offer employees who are working alone from home the opportunity to go in. This is something we’ve been looking at too.
FS: How is FlexGenius adapting its offering?
NM: While it’s been business as usual, we’ve been able to quickly update the platform, and add new content, because it’s so modern. It’s easy to adapt and configure – new functions and features can be launched within days. Client feedback has been great.
Whether you’ve got 30 employees or 6,000, we work tirelessly to make the platform relevant for whatever is going on in the world.
We’re looking forward to building on what we’ve learned to take the business forward.
