Case Study: Foundry – Creative employee benefits for a young workforce

Employee benefits case study: Foundry

Foundry, a creative software developer that works with clients such as Pixar, Mercedes-Benz and ILM, has revamped and rejuvenated its benefits offering, using Reward Gateway’s employee engagement platform and employee discounts.

Foundry designs creative software technologies used to deliver award-winning visual effects and 3D content for the design, visualisation and entertainment industries. Foundry’s software advances the art and technology of visual experience in partnership with creative leaders across the globe. It enables clients like Pixar, Mercedes-Benz, ILM, Weta Digital, The Moving Picture Company and Sony Pictures Imageworks to turn incredible ideas into reality by solving complex creative challenges.

The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in London, with 300 staff based across offices in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Austin and the UK. Foundry consistently invests in R&D to provide more efficient ways for its clients to bring visual concepts to life.

In 2015, the London Stock Exchange named Foundry one of its “1000 Companies to Inspire Britain.” It regularly features in The Sunday Times’ Tech Track as one of Britain’s fastest-growing private technology companies, most recently in 2016 when it also won the Excellence in Service Award at the International Track 200 awards. Every single film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in the last six years was made using Foundry’s software.

 Before the benefits

Prior to the new platform, Foundry’s largely millennial workforce was having to navigate a maze of complex benefits offerings, leaving the creative employees with a poor user experience. In addition to this, many of the benefits had separate portals creating confusion amongst staff, resulting in many of them missing out on the benefits and rewards they deserved.

 The vendor

By working with global employee engagement company Reward Gateway, Foundry streamlined its benefits offering and implemented an on-brand and engaging platform called ‘Foundry Hub’ for its innovative workforce.

Deployment 

The new platform has been branded in line with the imaginative work Foundry has created for its clients over the years and offers staff more flexibility and choice, as well as helping to drive awareness of existing benefits.

The platform has been deployed across Foundry’s UK employees, and across the two UK offices and its several remote workers. Foundry has seen 84 percent of its workforce register for and actively use the platform since its launch in July 2017.

The results

Jessica Barlow, HR Business Partner at Foundry, said: “We are a fast-paced company that builds cutting-edge technology, used to create astounding visual art. We wanted to revamp our benefits offering and platform to reflect what we do and recognise the hard work our staff put in.

“Using Reward Gateway’s employee engagement platform, we were able to do just that. We streamlined our offering, and improved communication and user experience, creating an uplift in registered and active users across our UK offices and remote workers.”

Ren Patel, UK Client Success Director at Reward Gateway, “Foundry work with leading creatives and for some of the biggest names across the globe, pushing the boundaries of visual experiences. The creative industry is highly competitive for talent and the importance of the right benefits and reward system is vital for attracting and retaining the best people. Rewards and recognition should not be lost because of a bad user experience so it’s been great working with them to improve this.”

Filed under: Employee benefits case study