Colleague Box transforms gifting experience for one of Europe’s leading food manufacturers

Colleague Box has been working closely with Pilgrim’s Shared Services which provides cross-functional support to Pilgrim’s Food Masters, Pilgrim’s UK and Moy Park; the Northern Ireland-based poultry giant with operations in France, Republic of Ireland, Netherlands and the UK.

It has created a custom-designed website to provide effortless gifting for a combined workforce of more than 20,000 employees.

This means that workers can log on to their very-own e-commerce site featured within main company website and choose a personalised gift – featuring the company branding.

Colleague Box, which has its headquarters in Northedge Business Park, will then receive a notification about the purchase. The gift is prepared and packaged on-site, and dispatched directly to the recipient.

Natalie Bamford, co-founder of Colleague Box, says that there are lots of benefits of building an e-commerce section for a company.

She said: “Corporate gifting is huge. Innovative companies know that building emotional connections can help with retention of staff, an increase in the feel-good factor, and corporate gifting is also a good way of marketing your business.

“Pilgrim’s Shared Services were operating as independent businesses, and it became evident that each company operated with different cost codes. This diversity made ordering gifts for individual departments a complex and time-consuming task.

“To make gifting as simple and flexible as possible, we built an e-commerce site for Moy Park, Pilgrim’s Shared Service and Pilgrim’s Food Masters, and it has been a huge success.

“For them, it means that they have a user-friendly platform provided by department heads with a streamlined and efficient way to select, purchase and distribute gifts.”

Natalie added that the technology can be tweaked for smaller businesses with the introduction of a web portal as opposed to a section on the company website.

She said: “We can provide a service whereby we invoice the client at the end of the month, and they input their own data. We do this to great success with Punch Taverns.

“These systems make the whole process easy and hassle-free, and make the employee feel valued.

“It’s also far more personal than sending a gift card; more than one in ten British adults had unused vouchers that expired within the last 12 months according to research from Ipos Omnibus.

“Both examples above show how innovative technology can simplify and enhance employee gifting in 2024.”