The Organisation
Redflags is an intelligent Human Risk Management tool empowering global organisations to transform human cyber risk, by delivering real-time prompts to change human behaviour, providing instruction that protects businesses. As a growing new business they employ up to 30 staff, operating across the globe with internationally renown clients including Fidelity, Accenture, and Unilever.
The Culture
Redflags intentionally operates its teams remotely allowing the recruitment process to hire talented staff from all over the UK. It is part of their policy of flexibility so that staff are encouraged to have autonomy over their work and to achieve work-life balance by offering reasonable working hours, and clear boundaries including using annual leave on their terms. Managers check in regularly on workload and wellbeing and explore further flexible arrangements where needed.
The Problem and How it was Identified
With employee wellbeing held as a value that Redflags lives by, it also become clear that some team members had very different requirements than others. Finding affordable good quality childcare, for example, had become an issue for one team member, something that was likely to become more commonplace as this young workforce grows towards starting families. Redflags had nothing in place for childcare which they felt was really missing from their staff offering.
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Head of Operations, Dionne Clarke says, “It’s no exaggeration to say that nursery childcare is the single biggest expense for many working families— often costing more than their monthly mortgage payment. It’s a massive financial pressure point and one where we really believe staff with children can benefit the most from help”.
The Aim
We are a remote-first company, this is intentional as it allows us to hire talented employees from all over the UK so everyone works from home, we also believe this obviously helps with the work-life balance and as you have said we are supportive of that. In general, employee wellbeing is a value we live by. That is why we provide healthcare benefits to staff, but we also wanted to ensure that the benefits of working with us were tailored to each employee. Childcare happened to become a specific issue that took priority for some of our staff members so we wanted to work on an initiative that ensured that this was adequately addressed. We also needed to consider other staff members that are planning a family, giving them the message that they do not have to choose between their career and childcare.
What Steps Did You Take to Achieve Your Aims?
Redflags looked into workplace nursery plans. For their dispersed workforce, a solution was needed that was more flexible than an onsite nursery. The company wanted to find a way forward that empowered their people to choose their own registered childcare, was simple to run, and ensured maximum savings for their employees.
Redflags also sought a solution that could demonstrate compliance with tax legislation, which quickly emerges as an important consideration for any business looking into this area.
What Steps Did You Take?
Dionne explains: “Halo Workplace Nurseries stood out as the ideal partner because it balances a risk free, cost-neutral financial structure for the company with a genuine, impactful benefit for Redflags’ employees, so we went ahead”.
What happened next was unexpected. Dionne reveals: “We started with one user due to our younger team demographic, but announcing Halo literally received applause from the team at an in-person company day. Our employees are delighted to have this benefit in place – because who doesn’t want to save money on high quality childcare whether they have children now or are thinking ahead to the future?
“Halo’s financial structure offers zero risk, and it’s clear they’ve invested heavily in ensuring total legal compliance for their salary sacrifice schemes. The process is smooth and remarkably easy to handle. Offering such a vital benefit to your employees is something you definitely won’t regret”.
What were the Results of the Initiative?
The impact has been immediate as one employee is already saving £600–£700 a month, which has cut his nursery fees exactly in half. He’s incredibly grateful, and for a young family, that level of financial support makes a huge difference.
Childcare benefits are a must-have in the modern HR toolkit, and Halo makes delivering them as effortless as possible. Halo’s intuitive portal streamlines management and puts all the right information at your fingertips. It’s an easy, impactful win for any business.
How Have You Measured Success?
Overall, the firm has seen an increase in employee satisfaction since introducing the policy. Employees have provided feedback that they are extremely satisfied with the new benefit and has it was announced to the company, staff erupted in a round of applause.
Dionne concludes, “A lot of companies will give lip-service to an ideology or ethos, but from Halo I got the impression very early on that they entered this business space to make a difference, to end confusion over how to follow the legislation and HMRC guidance, and they genuinely wanted to make life better for young families. They backed this mission up by making the platform incredibly easy to adopt and implement”.
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Anna Semple, CEO of Halo Workplace Nurseries adds, “We join the Redflags team in applauding their management for leading a company that thoughtfully demonstrates its commitment to supporting its working parents.
It gives us immense satisfaction to see all our hard work creating this compliance platform delivering exactly what we wanted it to: a truly impactful employee benefit”.