Alcatel Lucent puts European staff in touch with discounts

Alcatel Lucent is launching a voluntary benefits scheme for 1,800 staff across the UK, Ireland, the Baltics and Scandinavia.

The scheme, which begins this month, is part of a wider project to improve employee engagement at the telecoms company. It was first designed just for the UK and Ireland, but was then expanded to offer access to staff in eight other countries, including Denmark, Finland, Estonia and Latvia.

Richard Tyler, compensation, benefits and HR information systems manager, said work on the scheme began more than a year ago and took almost two months to be signed off. “The main concern from senior management was they did not want us to deliver something that was available just to UK and Ireland employees.”

Through the scheme, staff can access about 1,500 discounts, including retail vouchers, car hire, car insurance, will writing and a concierge service.

Long tender process

After a long tender process, Xexec was selected to administer the scheme. Staff took part in tender meetings to help ensure engagement, and some were randomly selected to test and give feedback on how the system performs. The brand name will also be decided by employees.

“We have never had [a scheme] that ties everyone together in the North Europe region, so it is the first time we have had a cross-country scheme applicable to all,” said Tyler. “We are going through some tough times in terms of restructuring and we really wanted to bring something positive to the workforce.”

Alcatel Lucent expects to personalise the scheme further in early 2010, using a new web 2.0 platform. This will enable staff to log on and automatically find geographically-relevant discounts and customise their home page to suit their needs.

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