The ScottishPower success story

Founded in 1990, ScottishPower is part of the Iberdrola Group, one of the world’s largest integrated utility companies and a world leader in wind energy. They are the first integrated energy company in the UK to generate 100% green electricity.

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Speaking of their silver award win at The Stevie Awards, Jenny McCosh, Benefits Manager at ScottishPower said “It's fantastic to be recognised for our flexible benefits scheme, which reflects our business commitment to sustainability and gives our employees a tangible way to live our values. It's making a real difference to employees and the environment.”

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The goal – reaching Net Zero

As a principal partner for COP26, ScottishPower is committed to tackling climate change and delivering the infrastructure to support Net Zero. They only generate renewable electricity; all their domestic green tariffs are backed by 100% green electricity, made on windfarms in the UK. On a mission to help customers live greener lives, they want to help the shift to low and zero carbon modes of transport.

They wanted to reflect these goals by helping their employees take steps to live more sustainably, so their Reward and Benefit teams aligned employee benefits, communications, and technology to this overall strategy.

ScottishPower already had benefits technology in place through ‘Your ScottishPower Benefits’ on Benefex’s OneHub platform (having partnered with Benefex in 2019). They wanted to improve the employee experience, enable employees to easily access everything their organisation does for them in one place, support the company culture, and help employees get more from their benefits.

The solution

Supporting their commitment to tackle climate change, ScottishPower introduced new benefits and enhanced existing benefits to help employees live the corporate values. This innovative scheme goes far beyond what most organisations do from a CSR perspective. Some of the benefits available include…

Green initiatives:

Salary sacrifice electric vehicles (EV) with Tusker – fully electric vehicles only, to 100% align with ScottishPower’s net zero goals.
EV loan scheme – gives employees an interest-free loan of up to £4,000 towards the purchase of an electric vehicle.
EV Grant Scheme – employees can obtain a grant (up to £6000) for applying sponsorship to their EV.

Power Me (worksite EV Charging Scheme) & discounts on EV home chargers .
Cycle to work – voucher value increased to £3,000 so employees can use to access electric bikes.
Public Transport Season Ticket Loans & First Bus Discounts – supporting use of public transport.
Pension scheme ESG – employees can now opt for four green investment funds.
Smart Solutions Employee Discounts, Technology Vouchers, and Perks at Work – giving employees access to deals on sustainable technology.

Supporting employee advocates:

Count Us In website – encourages employee pledges to reduce personal carbon emissions, earning points for their department on the leader board.
Payroll Giving – promoting tax efficient charity donations to climate action/sustainable charities.
Trees with Benefits – every time an employee chooses a Benefex marketplace benefit, a tree is planted in a dedicated forest in Nepal.

Using OneHub as a central home for everything they do for employees has given ScottishPower greater scope to promote important benefits, like pensions, which are receiving increased attention because the information is more easily accessible through Single Sign-On.

The results

Due to the improved system, new benefits, and better alignment of benefits to business strategy, ScottishPower is making a real difference to employees and the environment:

Environmental impact:

Since its launch in June 2022, 230 employees have joined the EV salary sacrifice scheme which means that up to 230 petrol/diesel cars are off the road – an annual saving of 460 tonnes of CO2 emissions (a conservative estimate is that each EV saves 2 tonnes of CO2 per year).
EV Grants and EV Loans launched on the portal Q1 2022. The easy selection process boosted engagement. To date, 47 employees have selected for an EV Loan and 183 employees have selected for an EV Grant.
143 employees signed up for the cycle-to-work scheme, also reducing CO2 emissions.
Benefex recently launched Trees with Benefits; so far 300 trees have been planted as a result of Marketplace benefit selections by ScottishPower employees.

Improved benefits engagement:

OneHub logins increased 136% from the 2022 enrolment period to the 2023 enrolment period (from 33,885 to 80,094), despite only a 2.9% increase in headcount over that period.

85% of employees rated the ease of submitting a benefit as good/very good.
Employees are engaging with their benefits more regularly – 1 in 3 employees now visit the site throughout the year.
When the 4 new ESC pension funds were launched in September 2022, there was a 369% increase in members visiting PlanViewer to review investment choices.