About Cottrills
Brammer - Voucher incentive scheme
Interview with Dave Whittingham, Head of Human Resources
Brammer is the UK division of Brammer plc, Europe’s No. 1 distributor of Industrial MRO products, offering a comprehensive range of over one million individual products via a network of 83 Sales & Service Centres.
Brammer have been a client of Cottrills for Long Service since 2005. In March 2007 Brammer extended their reward portfolio to include employee Incentive awards, rewarding with Cottrills Aspirations Vouchers.
Dave Whittingham, Head of HR at Brammer has agreed to answer a few questions regarding their Incentive scheme.
Q: Why an employee Incentive Scheme?
A: "We wanted to show our staff that we are an employer that recognises and rewards the effort, hard work and achievements of its employees".
Q: Did you reward your employees for hard work before using Cottrills?
A: "Yes, in years gone by the company would host an annual celebratory Dinner and Dance for recipients plus their partners. Upon review we decided that this way of rewarding our staff was dated and in need of a ‘freshen up’. We recognised that rewarding staff with a tangible gift that they could link with their achievement could be far more motivating than awarding a monetary gesture that could typically end up being used for non-motivational activities such as paying bills and buying groceries".
Q: Why Cottrills?
A: "We already use Cottrills for our Long Service Awards scheme and are very happy with the service we have received so it made sense to use Cottrills again when implementing our new Incentive scheme. Also, as Cottrills offer such a wide range of quality gifts, we were confident that there would always be items included that would appeal to our employees tastes".
Q: How does your scheme work?
A: "We wanted to reward individual employees and also teams, nominated by their Managers for actions such as ‘going that extra mile’, excellent customer service skills, targets met and general ‘extra excellence’ within their roles in a one off Incentive award.
Recipients were all awarded ‘on-the-spot’ with a Cottrills Aspirations Voucher, on the predetermined date, which they could then use to redeem against an item or items of their choice within Cottrills Aspirations gift range".
Q: Why award employees with Cottrills Aspirations Vouchers?
A: "We wanted an easy way to reward our staff that also allowed a personal touch. The flexibility of the Aspirations Vouchers meant that Managers were personally able to hand out to employees a tangible token of recognition that they could then exchange for a gift of their choice".
Q: What do you hope to achieve?
A: "We hope to demonstrate to our employees that their hard work and commitment are genuinely appreciated and will be rewarded accordingly".
Q: What has the feedback been like from employees?
A: "The feedback we have received from our employees has been very positive. We have received a lot of personal letters from recipients thanking us for their award and subsequent gift. The general consensus has been that the level of customer service the recipients received from Cottrills has been excellent".
Q: Any plans to extend your schemes?
A: "As feedback has been so positive from our employees we do intend to repeat the Voucher Incentives scheme with Cottrills again next year. We are also continuing with our Long Service Award scheme with Cottrills as this has always been well received and appreciated by our employees".
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