How Paulig UK used My Group to integrate a newly acquired factory workforce, and give employees a benefit that puts them in control
- Employees across multiple sites in Milton Keynes and West Midlands
- Food & Beverage manufacturing
- Challenge: Integrating Panesar Foods acquisition
- Outcomes: Engagement, take-up, cultural integration
The business
Paulig is an international food and beverage manufacturing business with factories across Europe. In the UK, the business operates a factory in Milton Keynes, originally home to Santa Maria UK and additional facilities in the West Midlands, producing chutneys, salsas and similar products.
Brad Wootton is Head of HR for Paulig UK. His scope covers the employment experience for the UK workforce including rewards, benefits and the employee impact of any significant business change.
When Paulig completed the acquisition of Panesar Foods, a long-established business in Tipton, the match made sense commercially. However, making it work for the people involved was a new challenge. It fell to Brad and his team to manage not just the operational integration, but the change in culture and benefits for all employees across the sites.
The challenge
The Portal was first implemented at Paulig’s Milton Keynes site. During this time, inflation was high and steadily increasing and the pressure on manufacturing workforces was significant. Like most businesses in that period, Paulig could not offer pay rises to match this change. They needed a different way to help employees make their money go further.
“It was all about finding creative ways to support people when we couldn’t simply give more,” Brad says. “My Group was an ideal candidate for that.” The platform was well received at Milton Keynes, so when Panesar was acquired, it was natural to extend the same benefits.
But there was a slight complication. Panesar’s had historic benefits in place. To bring the Tipton workforce into balance with Milton Keynes, Panesar’s employees would need to adopt the same benefits system and processes.
Why My Group
Brad had already seen the success of My Group in Milton Keynes and had experience and knowledge of the platform at a previous employer. With the new workforce from Panesar to bring on board and a significant benefits change to manage, a proper assessment was still necessary before implementing My Group.
“When we looked at other providers, there were things that we felt didn’t cater to absolutely everyone’s needs,” Brad says. “My Group had the big retailers all the way through to ones you’d never heard of before. It had the added functionality of being able to request local retailers to be added as well.”
Reward Beans – either gifted or earned via cash back – were also a significant factor in the decision. The flexibility of how Reward Beans could be spent set the platform apart from competitors. Employees could use them within the platform on Gift Card purchases, or save them up and withdraw directly to their bank account. This also helped to promote the change from the traditional system already in place.
Employees could use them within the platform on Gift Card purchases, or save them up and withdraw directly to their bank account. This also helped to promote the change from the traditional system already in place.
“Whilst we weren’t able to offer people 10 or 15 per cent pay rises, we were looking at creative ways to help them make their money go further, even though we couldn’t necessarily give more of it. My Group was an ideal candidate to do that.”
Brad Wootton, Head of HR, Paulig UK
The challenge was that it wouldn’t just be felt at a structural level, but also how the employees would perceive the changes, especially as the Panesar workforce is close-knit. They are factory-based and largely unfamiliar with digital benefits platform and many employees did not have regular computer access. Getting this right – both the communication and the product itself was critical.
“It was down to the breadth of the offering – the sheer scale of it. And then the flexibility of Reward Beans. You are in the driving seat. You know what you like. You’re in control. It’s your money.”
Brad Wootton, Head of HR, Paulig UK
The Rollout
Brad knew from the start that the rollout at Panesar would require more than just a simple launch. It was necessary to have a strong communications campaign. It needed to explain what My Group was, why the benefits system was changing, what was replacing it, and why the new package was better value, and better for the team.
Brad ran nine “town hall” style events at the Tipton site. Each session went through the changes item by item, from the updated annual leave to My Group. At each session, Brad walked through the numbers, showing the old benefit offering in comparison with consistent use of the platform could deliver over the same period.
For a factory-based workforce without regular computer access, the physical collateral My Group provided was extremely important to communication campaign. “My Group was really good with assets like the QR code poster deck”, Brad says. “People could scan that and activate their account, or just have it as a reminder of the benefits on offer. It makes it more accessible for people who aren’t at computers all day.”
The support from the My Group client services team also made a strong impression. “I’d be interested to know how they [turn things around] so quickly, because it’s almost always the same day that we get a response. I like that it tends to be the same person, it didn’t feel like [my queries] were going into an inbox that one of ten different people at random would respond to. That made a real difference”.
The live chat function on the platform received similar praise. “Knowing that between 9 to 5.15, Monday to Friday, you’re speaking to a person who knows the system inside out. It makes an intuitive system even more intuitive”.
The impact
The take up of the platform exceeded expectations, especially in the initial launch period with Panesar. Just three months after launch, reviews of the system across the business as a whole showed strong initial engagement. The quarterly management information provided to Brad gave him and his team a view of how things are developing in real time, along with clarity on where targeted actions can be made to improve engagement and activations.
“Benefits don’t fix a broken business or a broken culture”, Brad explains. “But if you’re getting the other things right, the right benefits strategy can absolutely enhance what you’re already doing.”
Paulig uses My Group to build upon their strong sense of community with a birthday Reward Beans programme. For every employee with an activated account, ten pounds worth of Reward Beans goes onto their account for their birthday. This has quickly become an effective tool for driving account activation, and communicating the extra benefits available to the team once they sign in. “I genuinely think that’s one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal when it comes to getting people to activate their accounts and get familiar with the system”.
“Once we got a couple of them thinking this [system] is quite good, it just rockets really quickly in terms of take-up and interest. If I can get someone on the shop floor saying, ‘I use this and saved X on my weekly shop, you guys should try it’ – they are ten times more powerful than I am.”
The habitual nature of using the platform is central to how Brad sees the platform’s long-term value. Paulig, across all sites have a great sense of community. People have worked together for years and regularly socialise outside of work. Once that first wave of early adopters started sharing what they were saving and show their passion and excitement for the platform, the usage of My Group increased across the board.
“If the average saving is 3.5 or 4%, and I went up to anyone and said I’m going to increase your net pay by that, they’d all say yes straight away. All they have to do is check an app beforehand, it just takes that initial habit-forming step.”
Brad Wootton, Head of HR, Paulig UK
“It’s a great portal. It’s shown itself to add real value to our employee benefits offering here at Paulig in the UK. The key thing I’d say to any other organisation is: think very carefully about how you communicate it and launch it. You only get one chance to do that. Use all of the tools My Group offers, make sure senior people are engaged early, and then keep communicating. If you launch it and then go quiet, it will peter out. The ongoing support and quarterly reviews are what keep it alive and keep it improving.”
Brad Wootton, Head of HR, Paulig UK
“What Brad and the Paulig team have demonstrated is something we see make the real difference across our client base: consistency of communication. The businesses that get the most from My Group are the ones that treat it as an ongoing commitment rather than a one-off launch. The fact that they were running nine town halls, putting posters on factory walls and personally explaining net pay comparisons to employees tells you everything about the effort that went into getting this right. The birthday Reward Beans programme is a brilliant example of a simple, low-cost mechanism that does a lot of heavy lifting: for activation, for perception and for culture. That’s the kind of thinking that makes the difference between a platform that ticks a box and one that actually changes how people feel about where they work.”
Jamie Keeling, Group Sales Director, My Group
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Last Updated: 29th October 2026
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Published: 26th Oct 2026