Give your employees the benefit of a reward

Smaller firms can now offer their staff benefits to match those of bigger companies – and they will be supporting other small businesses into the bargain.

National discount scheme My VIP Card has launched a cost-effective employee benefit scheme. My VIP Rewards lets any firm reward and recognise employees by offering access to 4,500 discounts and benefits.

These include a network of 1,000 small and local businesses which will encourage people to shop local and support smaller firms.

The employee benefit rewards scheme not only offers employees thousands of perks, it also gives businesses a discount to help them to save money and the app can be white labelled allowing a completely bespoke solution.

Maddy Alexander-Grout, founder of My VIP Cards and Rewards, said: “I created My VIP Card to help the local high street and to give back to the community. It rapidly expanded into the largest reward scheme in the UK. It seemed a natural fit to expand our offering to the employee benefits market as we are able to offer smaller businesses a very cost effective and attractive offering.”

Prices for My VIP Rewards range from £15 to £25 per employee per year, depending on the number of staff in a company.

A record £1.1billion was spent during Small Business Saturday on December 5 – the first time the figure has exceeded the £1bn mark.

Now in its eighth year, Small Business Saturday is designed to encourage people to support local shops. While the number of people visiting small shops on Saturday was 2.2 million lower than 2019 at 15.4 million, the average spent per person rose from £45.02 to £70.74 – a 56% increase – according to research run by American Express.

Shoppers who took to the high street demonstrated a real sense of community spirit, with 48% stating they had chosen to spend money with small businesses as they wanted to support them as much as possible after a tough year.