Connecting Birmingham Airport’s frontline workforce with recognition, rewards and benefits.

With an operationally focused workforce, Birmingham Airport wanted to better engage and value their teams, of which the majority are working on the frontline. Without access to corporate devices, they needed an innovative solution to bridge the disconnect with their deskless employees. Following a refreshed culture strategy, they needed to ensure the whole workforce felt aligned with their core values and understood how to contextualise and champion these in their day-to-day roles.

Importantly, in line with market demand and workforce feedback, Birmingham Airport was also proactively looking for ways to elevate its value proposition and enhance employees’ financial renumeration amid union-led conversations. They needed an offering that would meaningfully reward and support their employees.

Birmingham Airport had long-recognised the importance of valuing its employees, fostering a well-established culture of recognition. Colleagues were encouraged to celebrate their peers’ contributions through a manual nomination process involving letterboxes placed around the airport. However, this system, while effective in spirit, was labour-intensive and relied on HR to manually process and deliver the recognitions. The need for a more streamlined, accessible approach became increasingly evident as the airport sought to maintain its culture of appreciation in a rapidly evolving workplace.

Partnering with Rippl in June 2023, the BHXProudPerks platform launched to place recognition, rewards and benefits into employees’ pockets, to engage and empower their workforce.

Together with Birmingham Airport, Rippl designed and delivered a customised range of features into the ‘BHXProudPerks platform:

Personalised engagement app. Available in the Google Play and App Store, ‘BHXProudPerks’ is a multi-dimensional employee engagement app branded exclusively to Birmingham Airport, enabled for personal devices and logins so frontline teams are kept connected.

Social timeline. Recognitions, news and resources are centralised in a dynamic social timeline, engaging all corners of Birmingham Airport’s workforce in a social community.

Recognition. Achievements big and small are celebrated with branded digital cards for both managers and peers to recognise a colleague or managerfor their performance, contribution and service anniversaries. Recognition cards dedicated to Birmingham Airport’s core values bring its culture to the forefront.

Reward. Managers can elevate recognition with optional digital wallet points for employees to instantly redeem within the in-platform discounted voucher catalogue, showcasing over 200 retail, hospitality, leisure and travel brands.

Benefits. A dedicated hub hosts Birmingham Airport’s existing benefits extended with a bespoke blend of perks from the help of Rippl’s benefits consultancy service, including cinema and film savings, discounted gym memberships and days out, Cycle to Work Scheme, employees’ pension scheme, EV car scheme,  24/7 GP Helpline and more, accessible around the clock from employees’ pockets.

News and resources. Regular business updates and news keep teams informed and up to date, alongside a dedicated ‘Here For Each Other’ hub centralising employee mental health support and dedicated First Aiders.

Polls. Instant polling opportunities amplify employee voices across the business.

Reporting. Live data dashboards provide real-time insights around programme adoption, engagement and success.

Since launching in June 2023, ‘BHXProudPerks’ has evidenced multi-dimensional engagement and impact:

• 96% of employees registered on the platform.
• 80% active user engagement rate.
• 1,590 recognitions delivered.
• £170,200+ distributed in rewards.
• 98.5% of employees rewarded, with 91% of recognitions paired with reward.
• 1,440+ discounted voucher purchases, generating collective employee savings of £11,459.
• 6,500+ views of dedicated benefits hub.
• 53 employee anniversaries celebrated.
• 10,680+ social timeline interactions.
• 13,160+ reads of news articles.
• 480+ poll responses.