One of the major drivers that led Newcastle Building Society to join Zest’s benefits platform was the desire to provide visibility to its colleagues of all their benefits and encourage them to review these on a regular basis. This includes supporting its colleagues to actively review their pension contributions – and since launch, over 11% of colleagues have increased their pension contributions with an average contribution of 4% of salary, exceeding expectations.

In conjunction with launching the new benefits platform Newcastle Building Society sought to increase its benefit offering and launched a number of new benefits including a new Colleague Mortgage benefit – which provides colleagues with a competitive mortgage provided through the Society. This has proved very popular and over 5% of colleagues have already signed up to this benefit over the past 6 months.

The partnership will allow Newcastle Building Society colleagues to access benefits all in one place through Zest’s platform and will enable them to select benefits that are relevant to their personal situation, enhancing value for money and boosting competitiveness when attracting new talent.

Zest’s platform supports employers in boosting employee engagement in benefits packages – Newcastle Building Society saw 87% of colleagues log into the benefits platform in the first three weeks, and 99% of colleagues have logged in over the past 6 months.

The partnership also provides additional insight to help employers to understand which benefits are working for which colleagues, allowing them to tailor benefits for different groups to increase their usefulness and ultimately, take up by colleagues.

Matt Russell, CEO, Zest comments: “Partnering with Newcastle Building Society has already empowered hundreds of their colleagues to increase their retirement savings by making it simpler than ever to engage with their benefits packages. Employers are increasingly looking for new ways to meet the differing needs of their employees and need an intuitive, easy-to-use platform that delivers enhanced value and supports firms to offer personalised benefits without requiring huge resource to administer.”

Ben Thomas Head of Reward, Newcastle Building Society comments; “Providing colleagues with their benefits in one place, on our Colleague Reward platform provided by Zest, has been a step change for Reward at Newcastle Building Society. The new platform has allowed us to make it clear and simple to colleagues what their Reward package is, through features such as our total reward statements. The platform has also made it simple for colleagues to make changes and take control of their benefits. Features such as ‘single sign on’ direct into the platform and direct integrations with other services, including our Colleague Recognition portal, have made it really easy for colleagues to access the information they need quickly and easily.”

Newcastle Building Society is the latest addition to Zest’s client base across the UK, as employers increasingly look for ways to improve their offering and stand out against other employers in what is a competitive employee market.

Across Zest’s customer base, there has been a 5% increase on employee engagement compared to the same period March in 2023, and a 50% increase of people accessing the platform for the first time.

Zest currently provides its employee benefits platform and benefits services to a wide range of well-known businesses, including Yahoo, NTT, Bakkavor, and Travis Perkins.