The founder of Virgin Group, Sir Richard Branson, has always done things differently, a credo he has instilled across the multinational network of companies and affiliates.

The Virgin brand is one known around the world – from the Virgin Atlantic airline to its music label, Virgin Records.

That strength has grown and seen the Virgin brand establish itself in other markets including finance, health and wellness, and even space travel, counting over 70,000 employees across Virgin companies worldwide.

At the middle of it all sits London-based Virgin Group, the spoke at the center of the wheel, often acting as a leader to its affiliated organizations in thinking differently and embodying the views of its founder.

This was particularly evident in Virgin Groups recent approach to overhauling its benefits program.

UNLEASH speaks exclusively to Virgin Group CPO, Nikki Humphrey, about its journey to redefine its benefits package, bringing its 400 employees along every step of the way, and making transparency a focal point throughout.

Identifying the need for change as the workforce and wider world evolves

As the needs of employees change – and change has been something of a constant over the past five years for many – so too must benefits, which can act as an attractor of talent in an environment of continued economic instability.

Humphrey tells UNLEASH that while the existing benefits package offered to Virgin Group employees had been built over a number of years, with “some innovative individual benefits” that the company “felt proud about”.

“But what was starting to come to the fore was mixed feedback from our people around how they felt about it,” she explains.

Regular pulse surveys and feedback indicated that employees were becoming increasingly polarized on the topic, with a lack of personalization evident – a significant factor for a company with multiple generations working together.

Nikki Humphrey, Chief People Officer at Virgin Group

Humphrey details that while the company did make previous “tweaks and changes” during the COVID-19 pandemic these were only “small responses”.

“We hadn’t actually stepped back and said: Let’s look at everything and understand what we’ve got. Is it fit for the future and right for what our people need?”

An initial desk-based analysis, diving deep into the existing benefits usage data, found a several points to address, including low utilization rates.

For example, Humphrey details that the data showed its existing benefits package “orientated towards those that have worked with us for longer – so longer tenure, those who were more senior and those that were on higher pay”.

A surprising revelation was that around one in three (35%) of its staff identified as a carer or had caring responsibilities beyond parenting, but were not being catered to by the existing benefits package.

“When people have families, they’re quite open about it. But often caring responsibilities are almost just a responsibility people go and take on. I think a lack of recognition for that came out strongly in the feedback,” she says.

The data also identified only 25% of staff as parents or caring for children under 18, and yet Virgin Group had a “really strong orientation around family friendly policies”, further underlining how the workforce had changed since some of the policies were introduced.

The next stage of the journey was to involve the Virgin Group employees themselves in a “pretty innovative, very people led way,” Humphrey says.

An open review of its benefits offering was launched to all employees, sharing all the data gleaned during the analysis phase, encouraging engagement through open calls and focus groups.

“We heard firsthand what was really important to them; what they want, why they valued some of the benefits they had, why they didn’t, and what would they actually want,” Humphrey details, leading to “really good insights about how people felt, that complimented – no surprise – the data we had.”

Embracing the power of transparency to build trust and solve problems

The importance of including Virgin Group’s people throughout this journey was a lesson learned from Humphrey’s time as CPO of Virgin Atlantic, she says, having conducted a similar benefits review process at the airline operator.

“Back then we had really good engagement and feedback of what people wanted. But we did as most teams do – we did the review as specialists ourselves, then took that back and re-engaged with our teams,” she explains.

“I think the learning I took from that is the power how do you take your people with you throughout the whole process?”

Transparency into process and decision-making is something not many employees will often experience, particularly where it relates to compensation and benefits.

While there are numerous business and strategic reasons for this, it can also leave employees feeling disconnected from decisions and those making them.

But there is also risk in transparency, as Humphrey acknowledges: “You have to be brave.”

You’re disclosing where some of your challenges are, where some of your potential trade-offs are, and usually, as a people function, you hold that yourself,” she explains.

“We didn’t do that. We kept working directly with our people all the way through to the end.”

Part of the reason for this was a very defined benefits budget, one that couldn’t be exceeded, meaning Humphrey knew they had to optimize total spend for the most efficient and meaningful way for workers.

Of course this led to some “tricky” conversations along the way, she explains, and managing equilibrium and ensuring flexibility was embedded both throughout the process and in the  final outcome was paramount.

Transparent debates were one way of ensuring “people felt their voices were heard in all of those focus sessions”, as was sharing the data across the Group’s internal social channels and allowing employees to vote on what was most important to them.

“We were building more and more trust around everything that we held as a function, and our people saw that as well,” Humphrey says.

“They absolutely understood where some of our trickier decisions were. That’s quite powerful, when you start sharing that.”

For those particularly difficult decisions, special podcasts featuring different Virgin Group business leaders were put on, interviewing rewards leaders about the decisions and why they were made.

Humphrey details that despite this being a new approach, it was “incredibly successful” and allowed the business to get ahead of any potential unhappiness at a decision.

“I’m really straightforward with this. We employ adults. We’re all adults and very fully functioning in our home life. Why would we not be like that at work and why would we not have the trust and input?” She adds.

Sometimes I think business is a bit nervous to do that. Actually, when you do that, guess what? People lean in and they own it.”

Delivering a flexible and meaningful offering based on trust and needs

Historically, benefits packages have often been an inflexible proposition – employees allowed to choose benefits once a year from a menu they had no input in compiling.

Humphrey explains that the need for flexibility “came through loud and clear” through the employee engagement, but the budget constraints also meant they had to be “quite smart with it.”

This included keeping a core set of protection policies and benefits, certain leave arrangements and its pension contributions, in keeping with Virgin Group’s position as a responsible employer, as well as providing for their changing needs in a way that embodies the spirit of the organization.

We needed to give people the choices to choose, so we created a financial pot for everyone. We call it: Screw It, Let’s Do It pot, which is a very well-versed phrase that Sir Richard uses,” Humphrey states.

This is a personal pot that people are given once a year to use. They can spend it on whatever suits them. It’s not tracked; it’s done on trust.”

She adds that in the five months since its launch, the company is already seeing staff using the funds for a variety of purposes – from health needs and hobbies, to travel.

“I think it’s in the nature of the DNA of Virgin that people can spend it on whatever they want, and that gives them their flexibility,” she adds.

Alongside this, learning pots can be used specifically for leaning and development opportunities that “benefit them in terms of their personal development and growth at work.”

When the benefits offering went live the effort to bring employees along on the journey paid off. Humphrey details that 95% of its workers participated in the relaunched benefits package – the highest the company had ever had.

“We’ve seen an uplift on our top five benefits of 20% in take up rates. Compared to what we had, where we had some utilization rates that were really low, we’ve seen the complete flip of that, which has been really positive,” she explains.

She highlights that one result she is particularly proud of is a “massive uplift in what people are saving for their retirement” through the company’s’ pension plan.

“We made some quite fundamental changes around our pension offering. We followed external research in terms of what percentage you should be saving each year for your retirement, and we went and mirrored that,” she says.

“We made the changes within our offering, and we’ve now got over 90% of our people saving that recommended level, whereas the previous figure was, I think, 36%.”

There’s little doubt that change will continue into the future, but for now, Humphrey believes that the work done to bring Virgin Group’s employees along on the journey and offer a far higher degree of personalization is helping meet the evolving needs of its people.

We’ve responded in a really positive way to recognize that and keep evolving, to make sure we’re really getting the best out of our people because of the environment and the offering that we give them.”