AWARD CATEGORIES

Who do you see as the shining lights within the industry?
Who do you turn to for guidance or look to for inspiration?
Who is trailblazing with the initiatives they have introduced within their organisation?
And who is a must-attend speaker at events?

NB: To be eligible for this accolade an individual must be a practicing in-house reward, benefits or HR professional who has not won this award in the past three years. Benefits providers, advisers and consultants are not eligible for this award.

This category will celebrate an HR professional who has been in the industry no more than five years, but who has already had a considerable impact on the HR and business strategies of their organisation.

We want to know:

• How the skills and talents of this team member have played a crucial part in the effective delivery of the organisation’s benefits strategy.

Using examples of strategies, initiatives and day-to-day work, we would like you to demonstrate how the achievements of a specific individual have contributed to the results achieved. For example:

• What has this individual done to distinguish themselves early in their career?
• How has their input impacted HR or business strategy?
  

NB: For the purpose of this award, a public sector organisation is defined as covering public goods or government services, such as law enforcement, the military, infrastructure, public transport, public education, healthcare and government organisations.

It does not cover third sector and non-profit organisations.

The judges will be looking at the steps a public sector employer has taken to implement a successful benefits package or initiative for its employees. For example, you may have:

• Introduced support to help employees through the cost-of-living crisis.
• Offered financial wellbeing initiatives.
• Adapted benefits to meet the needs of a flexible or hybrid-working model.
• Introduced health and wellbeing initiatives.
• Launched or expanded an employee discounts or voluntary benefits scheme.
• Introduced or extended benefits to support working parents or carers.
• Taken steps to support employees’ mental wellbeing.
• Enhanced diversity and inclusion initiatives.
• Introduced or revamped a motivation or recognition scheme.

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

This category will celebrate an in-house HR or benefits team that has worked to deliver benefits that meet the HR and business strategies of their organisation.

We want to know:

• Who is in your team.
• How the skills and talents of each member played a crucial part in the effective delivery of your benefits strategy.

Using examples of strategies and day-to-day work, we would like you to demonstrate how the collective achievements of team members has led to the results achieved. This must focus specifically on the area of benefits, rather than the wider HR remit. For example:

• What makes your team stand out compared to other organisations in terms of its benefits-related work?
• How has your teamwork impacted HR or business strategy?
• How have you set up your team’s benefits strategy and job roles in order to support your organisation’s needs?

The judges will be looking for thought-through benefits strategies and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

This award will celebrate an organisation that demonstrates how its benefits strategy is aligned with its broader business strategy. The judges will be looking at how your overall reward strategy (not just one specific benefit) supports both your organisation’s HR and business goals.

For example, in terms of:

• Improved staff recruitment and/or retention.
• Increased productivity.
• Improved staff engagement.
• Reduced absenteeism rates.
• Staff buy-in for a specific/one-off project or organisational aim.

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

Most effective benefits communications strategy for employers with more than 1,500 full-time staff:

NB: This entry will be judged solely on the communications materials submitted to support this entry, rather than the benefits strategy itself.

You must supply examples of all communication materials mentioned in the entry.

Entries that do not include accompanying communication materials will not be judged.

The winner of this category will demonstrate an effective and innovative approach to benefits communications, be it face-to-face, print, social or digital media.

Your campaign could have been focused on a one-off benefits promotion or a whole benefits package.

The judges will be looking at:

• What media was chosen and why.
• The costs involved.
• Who put the communications strategy and materials together; for example, was this done by an internal team or external provider?
• Why the media and strategy were appropriate for your workforce
• How did the communications campaign help the organisation to meet the overarching aims of its benefits strategy?

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

Most effective benefits communications strategy for employers with fewer than 1,500 staff NB:

This entry will be judged solely on the communications materials submitted to support this entry, rather than the benefits strategy itself.

You must supply examples of all communication materials mentioned in the entry.

Entries that do not include accompanying communication materials will not be judged.

The winner of this category will demonstrate an effective and innovative approach to benefits communications, be it face-to-face, print, social or digital media.

Your campaign could have been focused on a one-off benefits promotion or a whole benefits package.

The judges will look at:

• What media was chosen and why.
• The costs involved.
• Who put the communications strategy and materials together, for example, was this done by an internal team or external provider?
• Why the media and strategy were appropriate for your workforce.
• How did the communications campaign help the organisation to meet the overarching aims of its benefits strategy?

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results

This award recognises the measures an employer has taken to support inclusion and diversity among its workforce.

The judges will be looking for initiatives that address the different benefits and communication techniques that may be required to ensure that all employees are supported and feel able to be themselves at work. For example:

• Removing barriers that may prevent staff from performing at their best, such as making adjustments to the working environment.
• Training line managers so that they are equipped to have meaningful conversations with staff and take effective action/signpost them to further support.
• Ensuring benefits communications are fully inclusive.
• Providing benefits that suit a range of lifestyles and family structures.
• Taking a proactive approach to age and gender diversity, such as through pay transparency and returner programmes.
• Creating educational and awareness campaigns, and employee networks.
• Running events that help to create a culture where all staff feel included, such as marking religious and cultural occasions.
• Supporting LGBT+ employees, for example: promoting LGBT ally schemes, or extending healthcare support to provide access to gender reassignment surgery.
• Going beyond legal requirements, for example, extending pay gap reporting to include ethnicity pay gaps.
  

The judges will consider:

• How you tailored your benefits initiative to support the varying needs of employees.
• Why this is appropriate for your particular workforce demographic.
• The impact the initiative has had on engagement, benefit take-up rates, as well as recruitment and retention.
  

The judges will be looking for thought-through initiatives and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

The judges will be looking for strategies that offer greater flexibility to help support employees manage their lives outside work, as well as their own wellbeing and wider workplace experience.

For example:

• Flexible-working arrangements to enable employees to adapt their work around their external commitments, while continuing to meet business needs.
• Childcare vouchers, emergency/back-up care arrangements and on-site nurseries to reduce the strain of balancing work and care.
• Access to information and resources to help with external commitments, such as guidance on eldercare or care facilities for dependent relatives.
• Programmes to help employees reduce stress from both work and life, which might range from meditation and mindfulness in the workplace, to counselling and EAPs.
• Benefits that support a family-friendly environment, such as support for new or expectant parents, employee networks, enhanced parental leave, family events for staff, areas for breastfeeding.
• Creating a positive working culture that combats presenteeism and encourages healthy balance.
• Providing opportunities for personal development, such as volunteer days and hobby funding.
• Support for employees in managing their own physical, mental, and financial wellbeing and work-life balance.
  
  The judges will consider:
  
  
• How you tailored your benefits strategy to support the varying needs of employees.
• Why this is appropriate for your particular workforce demographic.
• The impact the strategy has had on engagement, benefit take-up rates, as well as recruitment and retention.
  
  The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

Most effective use of financial education and workplace savings for employers with more than 1,500 staff

The judges will be looking for employers that have taken a proactive approach to their workforce’s financial needs and have supported staff in the making of financial, retirement or investment-related benefits decisions. For example, entrants may have:

• Brought in financial advisers for one-to-one meetings.
• Run financial seminars or workshops.
• Installed financial modelling programmes on the intranet or internet.
• Provided pre-retirement education.
• Offered staff time off work to sort out personal financial affairs.
• Offered workplace savings outside of the pension scheme.
• Offered sharesave/SAYE, share incentive plan (Sip), or company share option plan (Csop) to employees.
• Made use of technology to encourage employees to consider their short-, medium- and long-term savings needs and subsequently take action.
• Held themed events to encourage staff to think about financial matters, whether that be debt management, mortgages, or retirement income.
  

The judges will be looking for thought-through objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

Most effective use of financial education and workplace savings for employers with fewer than 1,500 staff.

The judges will be looking for employers that have taken a proactive approach to their workforce’s financial needs and have supported staff in the making of financial, retirement or investment-related benefits decisions. For example, entrants may have:

• Brought in financial advisers for one-to-one meetings.
• Run financial seminars or workshops.
• Installed financial modelling programmes on the intranet or internet.
• Provided pre-retirement education.
• Offered staff time off work to sort out personal financial affairs.
• Offered workplace savings outside of the pension scheme.
• Offered sharesave/SAYE, share incentive plan (Sip), or company share option plan (Csop) to employees.
• Made use of technology to encourage employees to consider their short-, medium- and long-term savings needs and subsequently take action.
• Held themed events to encourage staff to think about financial matters, whether that be debt management, mortgages, or retirement income.

The judges will be looking for thought-through objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

The judges will be looking for a successful strategy that has effectively delivered benefits through a flexible benefits plan. This can include plans that operate within a set enrolment period, as well as plans with any-time enrolment. They will be looking at:

• Which benefits you included and why.
• How the plan was structured.
• How the plan was communicated and administered.
• How it complements or helps drive other HR or corporate initiatives.
• How you handled costs and tax breaks.
• Do you operate a specific theme for the plan each year to promote particular issues, for example, employee health and wellbeing?
• What other schemes run in tandem within your organisation; for example, voluntary benefits or total reward.

Where you use a third-party provider to administer the scheme, the judges will be looking at:

• How you have customised the product in the way that it is presented to staff to make it unique to your organisation.
• Whether you have adapted the functionality to suit your particular workforce.

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

The judges will be looking for a successful health and wellbeing strategy that helps boost productivity or engagement through employee wellbeing. For example, you may have:

• Introduced a whole new healthcare strategy.
• Provided healthy eating or nutrition advice.
• Introduced gym membership or sports activities.
• Brought in health checks, on/off-site access to health services such as GPs or dental care, weight management or smoking cessation support.
• Provided a carefully targeted benefit aimed at tackling a specific issue.
• Restructured your organisation’s healthcare benefits provision in order to better tailor it to the workforce, reduce costs or produce a better return on investment.

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

This award will recognise employers that have made a concerted effort to address employee stress and mental ill-health in the workplace.

The judges will be looking for employers that have put measures in place to actively identify stress or other mental health issues, such as depression, and taken steps to support affected staff. For example, you may have:

•  Introduced cognitive behavioural therapy.
• Implemented or actively promoted an employee assistance programme or other form of employee counselling service.
• Taken steps to rehabilitate employees back into their workplace, following an absence due to stress or mental ill-health.
• Trained line managers to recognise the signs of stress or other mental health issues and support affected staff. 
• Implemented flexible-working arrangements to enable staff to better balance their work and home lives or take steps to support their own mental wellbeing, for example, to attend exercise classes during the working day or to travel outside of busy periods.

They will also be looking for:

• Strategies that address the wider causes of stress or help to improve employees’ mental health resilience, such as work-life balance, caring or financial issues.
• The steps you have taken to overcome these. For example, you may have introduced flexible-working arrangements, emergency care benefits, or financial education or debt counselling for employees.

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

This award will be judged solely on the communications materials submitted, rather than the benefits strategy itself. You must supply examples of all communication materials mentioned in the entry. Entries that do not include accompanying communication materials will not be judged.

The judges will be looking for a successful strategy that helps to boost employee knowledge, and understanding, of pensions and the need to plan for retirement. They will be looking at:

• What methods you have used to communicate pensions to staff.
• How these were appropriate or tailored to suit your workforce.
• The language and imagery used to communicate pensions issues.
• How this engaged staff with pensions
• What issues/topics the strategy covered. For example, was it to educate employees about specific issues, such as investment or contribution levels, the new pension flexibilities, changes to lifetime or annual allowance?
• Was this linked to a pensions change project which required communication to elicit employee buy in? Was this linked to pre- or at-retirement education for pension scheme members?

The judges will be looking for a thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

This award will recognise an employer that has developed a pensions strategy that best meets the needs of its workforce.
For example, you may have:

• Reviewed and changed your existing pension provision.
• Introduced a new scheme to run alongside existing pensions provision.
• Have a strategy in place for auto-(re)-enrolment and rising contribution rates.
• Introduced measures to deal with any increase in cost.
• Changed your contribution structure.
• Changed your default investment option.
• Introduced greater flexibility for staff around at-retirement options in response to pension legislation, such as the April 2015 pension freedoms, or the April 2016 changes to lifetime and annual allowances.
• Introduced workplace savings options to complement pensions provision.
• Taken steps to strengthen pension governance.
• Taken steps to reduce gender pension gaps
• Educated employees around the need to make adequate retirement savings and made provision for them to do so.
• Educated employees about the different investment options available to them.

The judges will be looking for a thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

This award recognises how an employer has best utilised and adapted technology to suit its benefit package, its business aims and the needs of its employees. For example:

• How has technology (e.g. portals, mobile apps) been tailored to meet the requirements of an organisation or a specific benefits package/initiative?
• Has wearable or mobile technology been used to support a new or existing benefit scheme?
• In what way has technology been used to increase employee engagement with benefits?
• How does the particular type(s) of technology chosen, and the way in which it is used, reflect the organisation’s business and benefits strategy?
• How has the use of benefits technology been designed to reflect employees’ use of technology?
• Has benefits technology been used to support benefits communication and engagement, i.e. through social media networks and messaging platforms.

Where an off-the-shelf product has been used, the judges will be looking at:

• How you have customised the product in the way that it is presented to staff to make it unique to your organisation.
• Have you adapted the functionality to suit your particular workforce?

NB: The judges will be looking at how technology has been customised to suit the organisation and its workforce, rather than at its cost and scale.

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

The judges will be looking for an organisation that has either launched or revamped its use of staff-paid, voluntary benefits or staff deals. These are benefits that are available for employees to take up at any time throughout the year.

Whether it is a plan that simply maximises staff discounts or uses tax-efficient benefits via salary sacrifice, the judges will be looking at:

• Which benefits you choose to offer and why.
• How the plan is communicated and administered.
• How it fits into other benefits strategies.

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

The judges will be looking for a successful motivation strategy that uses either incentives or motivational rewards to help drive employee performance, engagement or retention. For example:

• Clever use of motivational voucher rewards.
• Bonus rewards and incentives for sales teams.
• Awards ceremonies.
• Colleague recognition schemes.
• Long-service schemes.

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

This award will recognise an organisation that has offered the most effective benefits package to support employees with hybrid working.

For example:

• Innovative communication and motivation channels to recognise staff.
• Support in managing employees’ physical, mental, and financial wellbeing.
• Flexible-working arrangements to enable employees to adapt their work around non-work commitments, while continuing to meet business needs.
• How your benefits package has evolved since moving to a hybrid working arrangement ie have you replaced on-site services that were previously available?

The judges will consider:

• How you identified the best hybrid working pattern for your organisation.
• How your hybrid working pattern is structured.
• Why this is appropriate for your particular workforce demographic.
• The impact the arrangement has had on engagement, its take-up rates, as well the impact on recruitment and retention.            

The judges will be looking for thought-through initiatives and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

Most effective benefits strategy to help staff going through the menopause.

The judges will be looking for a benefits offering that supports staff with their menopause journey. For example, you may have:

•  Introduced a new range of supportive initiatives.
• Provided information or advice on the issues.
• Introduced training and employee workshops.
• Brought in external providers and access to specialists.
• Provided a carefully targeted benefit aimed at tackling a specific issue.
• Revised your organisation’s healthcare benefits provision to ensure it addresses the menopause-related needs of staff. 

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

Most effective benefits strategy to help staff going through fertility treatment or pregnancy.

The judges will be looking for a benefits offering that supports staff with their fertility or pregnancy journey, regardless of gender. For example, you may have:

• Introduced a new range of supportive initiatives, such as paid time off to attend medical appointments.
• Provided information or advice on the issues.
• Introduced training and employee workshops.
• Brought in external providers and access to specialists.
• Provided a carefully targeted benefit aimed at tackling a specific issue. 
• Revised your organisation’s healthcare benefits provision in order to ensure it addresses the fertility or pregnancy-related needs of staff.
• Introduced support for employees who need an abortion. 
• Introduced paid time off for employees who experience miscarriage or unsuccessful IVF treatment.
• Provided access to counselling services or emotional support.
• Introduced infertility support. 

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measures.

NB: This category is only open to internal HR teams of employee benefits providers, suppliers, advisers and consultants.

This award will recognise an organisation that uses its benefits package to position itself as an attractive employer, beyond merely offering its own products and services to its workforce.

The judges will be looking for you to demonstrate:

• How this goes beyond the organisation’s own products and services. 
• A clear business strategy underpinning your benefits offering for employees. 
• How this is appropriate for your particular workforce demographic.
• The impact this has had on engagement, recruitment and retention rates.

The judges will be looking for thought-through strategy and objectives, innovation and quantifiable, measurable results.

The overall word count on entries in this document must NOT exceed 1,000. Entries which exceed 1,000 words will be disqualified. Information can be listed as bullet points.

Please note: We will use the name of employer and title of scheme in relevant print or online media communications and on the graphics at the Awards ceremony, should the entry be shortlisted. Please ensure all text is accurate.

We will also use the name of the entering company, where this is a provider, adviser or consultant, in certain places: Where an entry wins a category or is shortlisted in a category, it is the employer that will be credited as the winning or shortlisted organisation. The name of the employee benefits provider, adviser or consultant that submits a winning or shortlisted entry on behalf of their client will be credited in the announcement of the shortlist by Employee Benefits, in text on the graphics and in the Awards Supplement as the entering company. We will use the copy you record below throughout the Awards campaign and where it is used it will adhere to the brand's house style e.g. Ltds, PLCs etc will be removed.

• NB: Entrants must be practicing in-house HR teams in organisations operating outside of the employee benefits industry. Providers, advisers and consultants may not enter other providers/advisers/consultants operating within this market. Such entries will be disqualified and no refunds will apply.