Lingfield Chamber of Commerce (LCC) celebrates its 30th (Pearl) anniversary this year and has teamed with Lingfield Park Resort (LPR) to create the “Preferential Employee Active Rebate Loyalty Scheme” (PEARLS). The scheme is designed to encourage mutual support in the local business community by:
- enhancing staff recognition activities in all participating organisations by providing pricing advantages to their employees. This is particularly useful to the larger employers, where staff recruitment and retention can be a challenge
- increasing “footfall” and income for the village shops and businesses by encouraging local employees to “shop local”.
- creating a successful and vibrant village resulting in fewer empty premises and a better feeling of general prosperity.
Background
Lingfield has a variety of businesses, from the one-to-two-person shopkeeper to larger employers, such as LPR, who employ up to 400 people during busy periods, and Young Epilepsy, whose payroll exceeds 650. All these organisations could benefit from an arrangement whereby Lingfield businesses encourage one another’s employees to spend their money within the village by offering mutual pricing benefits to employees of other participating local businesses.
Approach
All Lingfield businesses are invited to participate in the PEARLS loyalty scheme.
- Enhanced Membership of LCC is replaced with a new, more comprehensive, tier: “Preferential Employee Active Rebate Loyalty Scheme” (PEARLS).
- Businesses that choose to participate will be provided with a poster and a web site listing to advertise their involvement.
- Participating firms might choose to provide a special offer of their choice, where appropriate and advantageous to their business, to employees of other participating firms (e.g. 10% off an item, a discount on a meal, or a free service such as a blow dry with a haircut etc), but this would vary from business to business.
- Regardless of whether a business decides to offer a discount, their own staff will benefit from attractive pricing from other outlets in the village.
- Participating firms are identified in the directory on the LCC web site, where their offers may be listed.
- Employees of participating firms are identified by a numbered id card. The cards are issued to the staff members by their employers and a record of the card numbers assigned to the organisations retained on a limited-access, shared database.
Finance
The initial costs will consist of design, poster printing and id card preparation. LPR has generously offered to absorb these costs. Ongoing costs will involve maintenance of the web site. Participating firms will be invited to contribute towards running costs at the same rate as currently applies to Extended Members, i.e. a minimum £25 or £50, depending on the number of employees, but with a third tier of £100 for the largest employers.
Terms & Annual Review
Participating businesses will sign up for a one year period and the scheme will be reviewed on an annual basis to consider the merits and whether this is something everyone wishes to continue.
Next Steps
Business owners and leaders should register their participation via the button below: