There is no question that the cost-of-living crisis is placing many workers under huge strain, and not many businesses can afford to react with inflation-matching pay rises. Across the country, HR departments are working hard to find alternative ways to put money in people’s pockets and hold employees close.

One solution is PG's state-of-the-art cloud-based HAPI App, which allows employers to seamlessly connect every aspect of their employees' mental, physical and financial wellbeing, while also integrating existing HR services.

HAPI allows businesses to make their employees' pay go further by offering real savings and discounts on things like the weekly shop, work canteens, high street brands, eating out and other essentials like eye tests. A “4% saving” never sounds much, but when HAPI enables it on every weekly shop the annual saving adds up to £250 - a tidy sum that easily equates to part of pay rise while also saving on credit cards and other fees.

At the same time, HAPI brings an entire Employee Value Proposition into one place:

• Essential benefits such as pension and life cover
• Recognition schemes
• Initiatives for Physical and Mental wellbeing such as cycle to work schemes, Online GPs and gym membership
• Signposts to Financial and Social wellbeing such as tax code checker, education resources or debt and budgeting tools
• Access to more flexible benefits such as share purchase plans, season ticket loans, payroll deduction for savings, salary sacrifice schemes and childcare vouchers
• Information and options around hours and holiday entitlement

These are the many benefits of HAPI, but how can you make sure you are maximising them by avoiding platform inertia and driving engagement?

Tailored and relevant communication

First, you need to understand your employees and the language that is going to appeal to them. HAPI is a digital platform but remember that your communication strategy can take on many forms, including posters and leaflets in offices or depots and surveys in your canteen, but time these right.

Timing is everything

When you are sending out digital communications, think tone and think time. HAPI gives you a direct line to your employees’ phones through a combination of emails, push notifications, newsletters and surveys but they must be relevant. Never assume that workers are engaging with HAPI just because they are on their phones. If your workforce is largely administrative and office-based, online communications and notifications can be sent during the week and there is a good chance they will land and be read because people are online, connected and talking amongst themselves. If 90% of your workforce are tanker drivers, out on the road by themselves for hundreds of hours a month, it is going to look very different and need more careful planning. Whatever your audience, take the time to plan your communications so that they land at the best possible time and cut through.

Use a Calendar

It can often be a good idea to plan a calendar of communications throughout the year. In many cases, we help companies map out these plans to incorporate and even create key dates and events for the business, using these as hooks and opportunities to bring staff back into HAPI. With good planning, you can then align these push notifications and emails with other internal comms such as weekly staff emails or management meetings to amplify the message.

There are also key times when HAPI will naturally come into play, for example, Christmas, which you can start to promote from September onwards, or holidays which you can start to promote from Boxing Day ahead of the inevitable January rush.

Employee induction

To start each new employee off on the right foot, build the benefits of HAPI into their induction process. This is a time when you are naturally talking about their benefits and the new employee is interested in their entire package, rather than just their take-home pay.

Manager training

Every business has different characters and leaders. Some managers will naturally push their direct reports towards HAPI, while others might need to be reminded or even re-retrained in how to do that. Newly promoted managers will almost certainly need help and we have created Manager Toolkits to help with this.

Face-to-face - Make it personal

Finally, in some cases, companies create the opportunity for employees to have face-to-face consultations with PG. These conversations might be geared towards something different like Employee Insurance but we can use the opportunity to also talk more broadly about the savings and support inside HAPI, driving awareness and engagement with the app and connectivity with the business by taking a more personal approach.

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