Nottingham City Council has scooped gold and two other prizes at a top national award ceremony.

Works Perks, the council’s employee benefits programme, won the top prize at the HR Excellence Awards against extremely strong competition and was lauded by judges as a ‘beacon of good practice.’

They also praised the way the council injected creativity and innovation to the benefits package by linking it to the green agenda and employer branding, and remarked on “how much Nottingham has done with relatively little budget compared with the big-gun campaigns.”

The City Council also won the ‘Most effective benefits strategy’ award, beating off submissions from Specsavers and Browne Jacobson. The judges were especially impressed with the Greentravel2work and Cycle2work schemes, created by employee benefits specialists P&MM to encourage staff to travel to work by bus or bike by providing an annual bus pass or a bike paid for through tax-free salary sacrifice.

And the ‘Most effective use of internal communications’ also went to the City Council at the HR Excellence Awards. The authority used a range of methods to tell its staff about the Works Perks benefits scheme, including booklets, DVDs and briefings – resulting in 98% of new starters in the past year saying they valued Works Perks and would use it.

The employee benefits scheme aims to help recruit and retain staff – and staff turnover has fallen by 6% since the introduction and communication of the Works Perks programme. Judges praised the approach as ‘low cost, different and very clever.’

Portfolio Holder for Human Resources, Customer Services and Consultation, Councillor Eunice Campbell, said: “We value our staff and Works Perks helps us to reward them and to present ourselves as an employer of choice for local job seekers. We’ve seen a 20% increase in city residents being members of City Council staff in the last three years so we know it’s working. It’s great to have the success of Works Perks recognised nationally, showing that we are a leader in employee benefits provision.”

Richard Davies, head of employee benefits at P&MM, added: ““We are delighted to have this innovative scheme recognised by these prestigious industry awards and expect to see more organisations following in Nottingham City Council’s success with this popular benefits programme.”

These latest successes follow Works Perks winning Most Effective Application of Tax-Efficient Benefits’ at the recent national Employee Benefits Awards.