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CUSTOMER STORY

Unifying, valuing & rewarding HGS UK’s dispersed workforce.

Industry: IT Services & Consulting

Number of employees: 1,000 (UK)

Geography: UK, with planned expansion to South Africa 

Objectives: Championing visibility of recognition and reward | Scaling reach and engagement with decentralised teams | Providing meaningful employee wellbeing benefits

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About HGS.

HGS are a global digital customer experience leader specialising in enabling businesses to enhance customer interactions through intelligent automation, analytics and AI-driven solutions, supported by expert insights from their 20,000 employees across 8 countries worldwide. The ‘Ignite’ platform launched in 2024 to streamline recognition, reward and benefits to HGS’ remote and hybrid UK teams, with plans for expansion to South Africa in 2025. 

Restoring connection across decentralised teams.

Operating within a remote and hybrid call centre model, HGS’ decentralised UK workforce experienced lack of connection and limited engagement with their wider business. Without the organic social interactions of a traditional office environment, HGS faced key barriers to championing appreciation, recognition and belonging across their teams. 

Their previous rewards and benefits platform delivered inconsistent reach and engagement, alongside cost inefficiency due to many reward points going unused. Its lack of a structured recognition feature meant the frequent appreciation given by managers and team leaders went unseen across the wider business.  

HGS needed a new approach that visibly united and empowered their dispersed UK teams, whilst aligning with their global recognition and reward strategy. To ensure the right solution was implemented, HGS prioritised valuable insights from colleagues across the business to review their existing platform, design a 5-pillar UK recognition strategy, and specify outstanding requirements during procurement. Key colleague feedback themes surrounded: 

  • More opportunity to feel recognised and appreciated by leaders and peers 
  • Access to everyday discounts and benefits to meaningfully support the cost of living 
  • A centralised, positive community to feel connected across HGS UK 
  • The chance to get involved with reward-led activities, initiatives and competitions 
  • A one-stop-shop that’s easy to use within work and on the go. 

In 2024, HGS and Rippl designed and launched the dynamic ‘Ignite’ platform to bring their teams closer together, celebrate colleague achievements, and provide meaningful rewards and benefits. 

"One of our key people priorities over the past 12 months has been helping colleagues feel appreciated and recognised for what they bring to the table. By following this simple approach, we've built a pretty cool 5 pillar recognition strategy and introduced an equally cool platform - thanks to our partners in positivity crime, Rippl.”

Zoe Beattie, Head of People Experience and Engagement

‘Ignite’.

93%

colleague registration rate.

83%

monthly active engagement rate.

1 in 5

recognitions enhanced with reward.

£1,700+

generated in employee savings from supermarket discounts.

Features.

Working closely with HGS, Rippl designed a personalised employee engagement app to deliver on these goals: 

  • All-in-one employee engagement. Available on desktop, iOS and Android, Ignite’s company branded app streamlines a dynamic blend of features all under one roof, unifying engagement with their dispersed teams together around the clock. 
  • Social timeline. Restoring colleague connection in a social community, the Ignite timeline centralises all platform activity including recognitions, company news, latest available benefits and more for peers to engage. 
  • Recognition. Enabling business-wide visibility of colleagues’ great work, Ignite champions multi-level recognition for both managers and peers to celebrate every day wins, mark colleague birthdays, automate long service anniversaries, and champion HGS’ culture and values through personalised behaviours-led recognition cards. 
  • Reward. Ignite enables HGS to manage a structured manager reward workflow with flexible budget set-ups and approval processes to instil recognition and reward within HGS’ everyday culture. Reward is instantly available in colleagues’ digital wallet for redemption, and anything unclaimed is refunded back to HGS’ budget pot – investment that went unreturned by their previous provider. 
  • Discounted vouchers. Utilising an extensive voucher catalogue of 300+ retail, hospitality, travel and leisure brands, HGS elevate employee discounts further with enhanced supermarket savings to better support colleagues with essential everyday expenses – this has since become Ignite’s most utilised financial perk. 
  • Benefits. Streamlining HGS’ tailored employee benefits offer into a visible and centralised hub, Ignite enables instant mobile access to the wellbeing perks colleagues value most including mortgage advice support, cinema and film savings, discounted days out and gym memberships, as well as a brand new eyecare voucher scheme.  
  • News feed. Keeping their dispersed teams informed on latest business updates, Ignite centralises important resources in one place. 
  • Annual Ignite Awards. Shining a light on exceptional work from HGS colleagues, Ignite hosts personalised award nomination campaigns to elevate connection and recognition amongst peers, ensuring they feel seen, heard and valued for their contribution. 
  • Reporting. Ignite’s real-time reporting dashboard provide live insights into platform adoption, engagement and success, evidencing multi-dimensional impact. 

First 6-month success.

  • 95% colleague registration rate.
  • 85% monthly active engagement rate.
  • 28,000+ platform visits.
  • 13,000+ social timeline posts and interactions.
  • 2,215 recognitions sent.
  • £66,450 worth of reward points distributed.
  • 1 in 3 recognitions enhanced with a reward.
  • 643 anniversaries and service milestones celebrated.
  • 373 award nominations.
  • 6,400 visits to Ignite’s benefits hub.
  • £3,500+ employee savings generated, £2,000+ of which from enhanced supermarket discounts.
  • 159 EyeMed vouchers redeemed, increasing from 17 over 10 months from HGS’ previous provider.
  • 114 articles and activities shared, generating over 16k interactions.

"Listening to Rippl share the platform statistics was music to my ears—not because of the numbers themselves, but because I know what they represent. When you listen to people, understand their needs, and take action, it transforms their experience, their engagement, and ultimately drives real business results."

Zoe Beattie, Head of People Experience and Engagement

Future plans.

Following its impressive adoption and engagement with their UK workforce, Rippl is supporting HGS to begin Ignite’s global expansion, starting with South Africa in Spring 2025. Other exciting future developments include growing Ignite’s benefits catalogue further, integrating Ignite’s data into employee performance reviews to benchmark recognition across teams and expanding incentives with a Pay-it-Forward fund to help employees in need. 

"Ignite has been the tool that was missing which we didn't know we needed. Celebrating, collaborating, and socialising our successes amongst all colleagues. Embedding the 1 team culture."

Rachel Ord, Head of Operations

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Wanting to evolve their People experience with the needs of their teams, Asda needed to alleviate manual feedback and idea collation processes and centralise their separately hosted employee benefits, expanding the ‘Asda Stars’ platform to achieve just this.

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CONNECT. INSPIRE. REWARD.

Discover Rippl in real-time.

Curious to find out more? Schedule your exclusive demo instantly and in a 30-minute slot that suits you, we’ll walk through:

  • How Rippl can be tailored to your unique business geography, needs and culture
  • Our extensive platform feature suite including multi-level recognition, dynamic reward options, our benefits dashboard and wider engagement features
  • Desktop and mobile app customisation and branding capability
  • Real-time data and analytics reporting that drive strategic decisions
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FAQs.

Your questions, answered.

Rippl supports HR managers to connect their workforce – wherever they are based – in one, centralised app, ensuring engagement for all without relying on corporate devices. We bring your business culture to life with values-based recognition and reward, elevating your company values from words into meaningful actions. By streamlining typically manual processes behind reward distribution, milestone recognitions and employee feedback, we save your team time and improve efficiency. Plus, with tailored benefits and real-time data insights, we help you elevate and measure your employer brand.

Through a unique blend of automating milestone recognitions, simplifying reward and feedback processes, and streamlining employee benefits, all in one platform, we maximise programme efficiency and impact for HR teams by removing the manual, time-consuming tasks on your to-do list.

Whether your people are office-based, work remotely or operate in a deskless or frontline role, Rippl connects and engages everyone, all under one roof. For desk-based colleagues, Rippl can be accessed on desktop, whereas remote or deskless teams have the option to use their smartphones – no corporate device or login required.

Rippl’s dedicated reporting hub enables live tracking of programme adoption and engagement including how your teams are interacting with each of your platform features, as well as other metrics including turnover rates for engaged and non-engaged users. Plus, with Rippl’s Feedback and Survey features, you can gather a more in-depth picture of what’s working well and ideas for future programme elements.

Yes! Our expert team is here to support with everything from platform launch to everyday comms, with different package options for our customers to choose from and tailor depending on your internal resource and requirements.