Brenntag is a Germany-based global market leader in chemical distribution. They simplify market access to thousands of products and services by managing complex supply chains for chemical manufacturers and consumers. Brenntag operates from more than 530 locations across 74 countries. Brenntag's Indian subsidiary, Brenntag Ingredients(India) Private Limited, was founded in 2005 and is a leading manufacturer, trader, and importer of chemicals and allied products.

As part of the Human Resources team, Nidhi Verma leads the employee engagement and rewards initiatives at Brenntag, HR Information Centre - Asia Pacific.

Manual rewards and intermittent engagement
Before Xoxoday, Brenntag had a blanket employee engagement and rewards mechanism that involved issuing bank cards. These were given to employees on their birthdays and as rewards. Brenntag also intermittently ran a few engagement activities like "kids day at work," team-building activities, birthday celebrations, and CSR activities. But all the rewards had to be manually procured, tracked, and distributed.

‍Why Empuls was chosen for driving employee engagement initiatives
Brenntag evaluated two engagement solution providers before zeroing in on Empuls. The intuitive and exciting design of the Empuls platform made it much more user-friendly than the other solutions. After implementation, the platform's usability led to great adoption rates.

Value for money
Empuls delivers excellent cost efficiencies, considering the breadth of capabilities and benefits it offers. Empuls brought about advantages like increased engagement and reduced overheads when managing engagement programs. These perceived benefits clearly showed a positive ROI from Empuls.

"Both, HR and employees, benefited hugely since implementing Empuls. This platform had every reward and recognition option and it helped create complete transparency in the process. The fact that the platform is interactive and interesting leads people to visit and use it often thereby increasing adoption rates. When one gets recognised even for the smallest of their achievements, everyone gets to know– which is the best way to recognise people."
- Nidhi Verma, HR Manager, HR Information Centre - Asia Pacific, Brenntag

‍Increased transparency in R&R
Both HR and employees benefited greatly due to the transparent R&R process. The rewards criteria could be easily set up and understood by employees. When employees received awards, everyone understood why and how the winners were awarded. This allowed HR to define their engagement programs clearly and employees to adopt them quickly.

Reduced turnaround time for rewarding
Empuls drastically reduced the amount of time required to track and disseminate rewards through its rewards automation feature. This process automatically identified an event for rewarding - for example, a birthday or a work anniversary and rewarded the respective employee with predesignated number of points.

One platform for all engagement needs
The engagement and the rewards platform presented an end to end solution to the employees and the HR. The feeds and announcements feature helped quick communication and engagement. The rewards automation and the nomination workflows reduced the HR overheads. The extensive rewards catalogue opened the employees to an extensive range of options where they could redeem their reward points. Resultantly, Empuls worked out for all the organization’s employee engagement needs.

Social appreciation
The feeds and announcement feature gave way to social appreciation and made the events interactive and interesting for the employees to use. Special events like birthdays and rewarding became great avenues for the employees to mutually appreciate each other and engage in positive conversations.

Increased employee engagement with Empuls
For Brenntag, Empuls’ robust and intuitive platform, along with its collaboration and motivation modules, delivered a comprehensive solution. They are seeing a better perception of organizational transparency amongst employees and overall improved employee engagement levels.