Budget busting benefits at Oxford University Hospitals

Key benefits and outcomes

• By creating strong relationships with local businesses and reward and benefits suppliers, the trust has been able to add a wider range of initiatives into its benefits offering.
• The trust has designed and delivered an offering that was developed in partnership with staff, making it more relevant to them. 
• The trust has saved approximately £173,000 from working with reward and benefit providers. The trust has been able to leverage these savings directly enabling them to offer a wider range of benefits to staff.

What the organisation faced

The financial challenges facing OUH, meant that it had limited budget for developing and delivering its reward offer, with limited staff to support any reward related work across the organisation. Reward and benefits fell under the portfolio of the assistant director of workforce, with a small bit of admin support. 

The trust recognised that to bring in new and innovative rewards and benefits to enhance its existing offer, it would need to generate income to fund it and come up with innovative ways to generate funds and reach out to businesses and organisations to boost their reward offering that would make a tangible difference to staff.

"I was extremely grateful for the £250 which I used for a new bicycle"

What the organisation did

The trust looked at where it could make savings, generate income to fund its offering, and scope out additional benefits through leveraging community and business relationships.

Income generation

The trust generates a substantial amount of revenue through its salary sacrifice schemes, in particular its car lease scheme. For every car a staff member takes out it generates savings in National Insurance (NI) and pension contributions for the trust. Working with the finance department, the team has been able to reconcile the finances and take the savings out to put into a separate reward budget.

Administration fees can be charged on certain benefits. Benefit suppliers can add a small administration fee onto every transaction, for example, home and electronics. Oxford University Hospitals decided not to charge admin fees, to keep the schemes as affordable as possible for staff. However, employers can utilise this option as a way of generating further income. 

Working with local businesses

Leveraging relationships with local business and communities has been key in its success to developing a reward offer on a shoestring budget. The trust regularly reaches out to companies to see what benefits might be on offer. 

For example, the trust worked with local business Oxford City Football Club and secured a number of free tickets for staff. This would also be an opportunity for the football club to generate income in return from the money they would get in food and drink sales. The football club agreed to run the scheme for one match, and it ended up being the largest home attendance the club has ever had. The football club is keen to work with the trust again following the success. 

Aside from the core offer and the added value benefits, the trust has implemented a ‘surprise and delight’ element to its overall reward strategy, which covers added extras staff don’t expect. There are many examples of where the trust has worked with local businesses, including an F1 ticket prize draw, where Silverstone gave the trust some free tickets, and a local food festival gave the trust 1,000 free tickets. 

In November 2024, the trust set up an ‘OUH rewards advent calendar’ which sat on the staff intranet and for 24 days staff could open each picture to see a different reward or benefit. Some days would be promoting existing benefits, but other days were prize draws with gifts from local businesses, such as bus pass vouchers, signed Oxford United Football Club shirt, love2shop vouchers, free tastecards and a hamper of wellbeing items from the trusts charity.

Negotiated discounts

The trust wanted to support staff to ensure their bicycles would be protected against cycle crime. The trust contacted a cycle insurance company to ask if the organisation can pass on a staff discount in return for the trust promoting them as a provider of cycle insurance. 

"I am now able to cycle to work which has reduced the amount spent on petrol, money which I can now put to better use."

As a result, staff receive 10 per cent off cycle insurance. By recognising a problem staff could face, the trust was able to tailor its reward offer to meet their needs and provide something that is useful and practical.

Working with benefit and reward suppliers

The trust works with a variety of reward and benefit suppliers for different parts of its reward offer and has formed good working relationships with them to ensure it gets maximum value for money from each service.

It is important to regularly review the uptake of the benefits. For example, the trust can look at the uptake of its car lease scheme against the number of staff to provide comparative data. Most suppliers have testimonies on their websites which help convey the value added of the different services and benefits they provide. This is a useful resource to signpost staff to for further information on the offered services. 

Engaging staff in the offer

The trust has a number of mechanisms in place to determine the value that staff place on their reward and benefits offer. The trust utilises several communications channels such as social media, the staff intranet and surveys. It also uses virtual suggestions boxes, and the team have been out to staff roadshows to speak to staff about what they want.

‘The trusts cost of living support has been phenomenal."

An example of this, is the work the organisation has done to support staff with the rising cost of living. The chief people officer asked staff what support they would like, and the problems they were facing, which resulted in a number of benefits being implemented, including:

• freezing rent on the trust accommodation for one year. 
• free mortgage brokers advice
• giving lower banded staff who couldn’t access the lease car scheme £250 towards a green transport subsidy, for example a bus pass 
• free bicycle repairs and refurbished bikes given to lower banded staff.

Results and benefits

A number of positive benefits have been seen by the organisation from focussing on how they deliver their benefits strategy on a budget.

Across the 24 days of the OUH rewards advent calendar the trust had a total of 43,000 views to the OUH rewards platform on the intranet site. There was a total of 4,289 entries into prize draws. 

As part of this initiative, they heavily promoted the Vivup home and electronics scheme and during this period a total of 941 orders were processed for home and electronic goods. Working with Vivup and other salary sacrifice providers has enabled the trust to raise approximately £173,000, which has gone back into the reward budget to support them with offering other benefits which would come at a cost, such as free tea and coffee. This is how the trust has been able to successfully deliver their benefits strategy on a shoestring budget.

Contact:

For more information please contact reward@ouh.nhs.uk