Meeting the challenge of boosting help during Covid
The Licensed Trade Charity is dedicated to providing support to those who are currently working or have previously worked in the drinks trade and their dependants. Established over 225 years ago, the charity provides a free helpline that offers support from trained counsellors. It delivers practical advice on issues including housing, finance, education, training, mental wellbeing and physical health. The charity works with a range of experts such as housing and homeless charity Shelter and career transition support firm Renovo meaning no problem is too big or small and specialists are always on hand.
The charity takes a holistic approach to support. This means we don’t just put a plaster over the problem; we find the root cause and seek to address it. For example, if someone is seeking financial help, we will work with them to see how their outgoings and bills can be reduced. All of this is achieved by a small but incredibly dedicated and hard-working team, who in the last year supported over 73,000 people.
As demand for support surged in light of the pandemic, we partnered with branded payments company Blackhawk Network to provide food vouchers as a means of immediate support for nearly 4,000 of those people in need.
Impact of Covid-19
No one has previously witnessed the disruption to the hospitality industry like that caused by Covid-19. All pubs closed on 20 March 2020 and at various points thereafter. While we knew that Covid measures were required, no one could have predicted the far-reaching impact the closures would have and how long the industry would be shut down for. The repercussions have been catastrophic; an estimated almost 6,000 licensed venues, including pubs, clubs and restaurants, closed permanently last year. This resulted in nearly 600,000 job losses across the sector in 2020.
As a result of the fallout, my team at the charity faced a huge influx in requests for support. Initially, calls came in from people who were worried about their finances, unsure how to get by and support loved ones without an income — this was before the furlough scheme was introduced. But calls quickly turned to the topic of mental health. Typically, people working in hospitality enjoy the personal interaction that comes with the job. To have this taken away was a big shock, leaving many workers expressing feelings of loneliness and isolation.
Between March and June 2020, we saw our biggest ever peak in demand. Thousands of hospitality workers were facing an uncertain future and were unsure as to whether they could survive on a reduced income, even with furlough. Many people applied for support to ensure they could still provide food and necessities for their families. On more than one occasion, people had stated that they were so desperate they had to decide whether to “eat or to heat”, meaning they had to choose between buying food or paying their electricity bills.
In just two days we received nearly 4,000 applications for financial aid – as opposed to the usual 600 applications per year. While the team was determined to service as many people as possible, we knew we had a monumental task on our hands.
Legacy IT processes
Before the pandemic, we would process all applications for grants and support manually. This was because we had to ensure the applicants had met the eligibility criteria before individually distributing the required grant value.
Understandably, the influx of Covid related applications meant the team would not be able to replicate this manual operation thousands of times over and still provide time-sensitive aid. A new approach was essential, which is when we decided to turn to digital codes that can be exchanged for gift cards.
While providing supermarket gift cards was something we’d briefly done in the past, we found the process to be labour intensive and time consuming. It involved spending time on the phone with each supermarket to process each order. In addition, physical gift cards sent out in the post were often lost, causing the recipient to go without – something we couldn’t risk happening this time around.
We had struggled to find a fit-for-all organisation which could offer a range of retailers and brands to facilitate a wide variety of requirements. Previous schemes were centred around clothing shops, but these could not fulfil all the immediate needs of furloughed staff who were coming to us.
Using digital eCodes
In May 2020, while looking for a partner to meet demand, we received a recommendation from the Greene King team, who had worked with Blackhawk Network in the past and were happy with the results. We reached out to the provider, and as part of its Payment for Good solution once onboarded, we were equipped to manage the huge uptake in applications in just one week.
We used Blackhawk’s Select platform and were able to implement an entirely new system that enabled us to cope with demand. Select is a scalable, brandable, end-to-end reward platform that provides our recipients with a digital eCode, to be spent at a range of retailers.
Our beneficiaries were able to swap their eCodes for their choice of single and multi-retailer gift cards. The catalogue of brands available to them provided access to necessities such as food and clothes, and they could split the value across multiple shops, depending on what they needed most at the time. Depending on the delivery method chosen, recipients received their eGift within 24 hours, ready to spend as needed.
We were also able to work with the team at Blackhawk to agree on branding and the message for the eCodes that were sent out on our behalf. This meant we had total control over what they looked like and ensured we were providing our beneficiaries with the information they required. The onboarding process was simple, and the speed at which the provider operated and got us set up on its platform made a world of difference, to us and those we helped.
Onboarding success
As a result of all this, we were able to financially help nearly 4,000 people at a critical time. Once onboarded and fully set up on the platform, all further applications were processed within 72 hours, meaning that more people got the help – fast. In total, we awarded £952,855 in eGifts in 2020, with £466,200 awarded so far in 2021.
Because of how effectively the project was run, a further four licensed drinks trade companies approached us to support their staff while they were furloughed.
With ongoing redemption and query expertise from our partner’s customer service team, we can continue to focus on our own goals of reaching more people at a vulnerable time and raise awareness of the work we do.
Overall, everyone involved in the project walked away with a huge sense of achievement from helping licensed trade people during some of the toughest times of their lives. Often, the situation didn’t actually call for a huge sum of money, just enough to minimise the stress beneficiaries were facing and help get them back on their feet. As a result of the partnership, we learned how digitising processes meant we could work more efficiently and help those in need quicker.
Second campaign
Since the initial rollout, we have executed a second Select campaign with Blackhawk Network. Looking ahead, we continue to raise our profile within the sector and encourage more beneficiaries to turn to us for support when they need it. We can now rapidly respond to requests for financial help. While our in-house team is small, we are now more ambitious and driven to help those in need than ever.
