For the past 40 years, NRL Group’s range of recruitment, workforce management, and contracting services have helped global engineering companies succeed. Yet despite its growing size and scale, the family-owned business has retained its personal feel. The company is always looking at ways to support its colleagues, which is why NRL Group’s board decided to focus on financial wellbeing and implement Bippit.

Showing your team that you care

‘Care: create an environment in which we work confidently together.’

This is one of NRL’s core values.

NRL is constantly looking at how they can support their colleagues. The company’s Initiatives Group looks at new benefits and programmes that can help people come into work and be the most effective that they can be. The group also offers colleagues the chance to say what they would like to see offered at NRL.

“You spend a lot of hours at work so if we can make that experience any better then, it will encourage people to stay with us,” says Greg Compton, NRL’s Group Director. “We look carefully at how we can retain our people because as a family-business, it’s all about people.”

“A lot of colleagues have been here for 10, 15, 20 years which is unusual within our industry because it's a fairly mobile one. We're always looking at ways of supporting our colleagues in the long term and this has helped us maintain close-knit teams.”

NRL offers a holistic package to ensure people can come to work happy and mentally healthy. A number of healthcare benefits include subsidised gym memberships, money back on an optician or dentist visit, and mental health first aid training.

“We’re always looking to keep on top of wellbeing needs and trends as our most important asset is our people. Their wellbeing is what's important to us as a business and as a company. We’ve supported our people with their general physical wellbeing. Now we're moving more into the mental wellbeing side of things, and financial wellbeing feeds into that.”

Ensuring staff are healthy, happy and comfortable

Aware of growing concerns around the cost-of-living crisis, NRL wanted to provide more financial support to colleagues.

“Any way we can support our colleagues through this difficult time is worth investing in. It all ties back to the culture of the business and how we look after our people. The ways in which we can do that have grown over the years so we add extra benefits as we can and as they make sense.”

“Financial wellbeing is a mutually beneficial thing because if colleagues are healthy, happy and comfortable then they tend to work better.”

As part of their financial benefits package, NRL offers a number of discount schemes with various suppliers. However, when coming into the cost-of-living crisis the company wanted to offer more.

“If people are struggling financially then they tend to stick their head in the sand, but we wanted our team to be able to open up and get the financial support they needed.”

Recognising that everybody likes to get support in different ways - whether it be through webinars, written information, or one-to-one coaching - NRL wanted to give their colleagues access to a financial wellbeing platform that offered all these different methods so that colleagues could gain information and have completely discrete conversations.

This is what led NRL to Bippit.

Opening up access to financial guidance

When looking at financial wellbeing providers, NRL was drawn to Bippit’s professional one-to-one coaches with FCA-recognised qualifications who can give every employee impartial support on a range of queries including savings, pension schemes, mortgages, equity plans, taxation, and insurance cover.

“We wanted to give colleagues the chance to access financial guidance, and liked that there is no sell involved in Bippit’s coaching support. It’s completely independent. The support is about what you should consider doing, what it’s worth looking at, or what options are available.”

NRL ran a small pilot study of Bippit and were encouraged by the levels of interaction with the app, and how people were using it in different ways.

“Some said they really liked the coaching, others talked about the platform and the gamification side of it, or setting goals and tracking spending. Being able to capture everything in one place was particularly important.”

“I think the flexibility of Bippit was what attracted us. It empowers our employees. They get really good-quality support.”

Supporting both their people and their communities

For NRL, retaining people isn’t all about increasing salaries. It’s about creating an environment in which people feel valued and supported. This approach is clearly effective given that the Leadership team alone has an average of over 20 years with the company, and that the company itself is celebrating its 40th year in business.

To mark the occasion in a way that best fits their culture, NRL teams are coming together to collectively support 40 charities throughout 2023.

“We’re encouraging every part of the business to go out and support local charities. Everybody's got something that's important to them, so if we can allow them to support a charity within their local area then that’s massive. We run outreach programs in prisons as well, support social mobility, have been carbon neutral for 3 years, so it’s not just about supporting our staff, but supporting our communities too.”

“For the size of business that we are, we’re genuinely trying to make a difference.”

With NRL colleagues now set up on Bippit, long may that sentiment continue.