Employee Discounts, Promotions & Cashback
When employees feel financial pressure, the most immediate thing you can offer them is a way to spend less on what they’re already buying.
Our employee savings scheme gives your staff access to discounts, cashback, and gift cards at over 1,000 UK retailers, including every major supermarket, all in one place, under one login.
For employees who use it consistently, the saving is meaningful enough to make a real difference to household finances, earned without changing a single spending habit.
How does the employee discount scheme work?
An employee discount scheme gives your people access to savings on everyday purchases through their employer. The best platforms deliver this through three distinct mechanics, each suited to different spending habits, and most employees use a combination of all three.
Discounted gift cards
Employees buy digital gift cards at a discount and spend them at face value in store or online, it’s just like cash at the till. For supermarket gift cards, this means employees can still use their loyalty cards and existing vouchers at the same time because the gift card is simply being used as payment.
Discounted gift cards are often the highest-value saving available through the My Group portal because they’re available across major supermarkets and a wide range of high street and online retailers, covering clothing, commuting apps, entertainment and streaming services, and much more.
Most cards can be purchased through the portal in seconds, including while standing at the checkout.
Cashback
Employees follow a link from the platform to their favourite retailer’s website, for everything from gym memberships to holidays and cinemas, and shop exactly as they normally would.
The cashback is tracked automatically through that link and credited to their Reward Beans balance within the My Group portal once the purchase is confirmed. Employees can use their Reward Beans towards gift cards and other rewards available through the portal.
There’s no change to the shopping experience, no separate checkout, and no codes to enter. The saving happens in the background on purchases employees were already planning to make.
Promo codes
Employee promo codes are exclusive discount codes available at the point of purchase across a wide range of online retailers.
Employees copy the code from the portal and enter it at the retailer’s checkout to receive the stated saving. The saving is confirmed before the employee commits to buy, with no hunting around for codes that don’t work.
Sam and Alex: An average example.
Sam and Alex are theoretical parents of two. They are average and spend exactly the UK average on food and clothing – between them they spend the 2 child family average £161 a week on groceries and approximately £910 a year on clothing for the family. By using discounted gift cards for the weekly shop and earning cashback on their clothing purchases, they accumulate over £400 in Reward Beans over the course of a year, without changing where they shop or what they buy.
For a basic rate taxpaying household, that’s the equivalent of a £556 gross pay rise, earned simply by shopping the way they already do.
Which retailers offer discounts, cashback and promotions?
The scheme covers over 1,000 UK retailers across every major spending category. Rather than list them all, here’s a sense of the breadth:
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Groceries: every major UK supermarket
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Clothing and footwear: high street and online, budget to premium
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Health and fitness: gym memberships, sports retailers, and wellbeing brands
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Travel and experiences: flights, hotels, holidays, and days out
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Technology and entertainment: electronics, streaming services, gaming, and apps
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Home and garden: DIY, furniture, and homeware retailers
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Dining: restaurant chains and food delivery
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Learning and development: online learning platforms and course providers
Retailer availability, promotions and saving rates may change over time.
Local deals are also available through the platform’s map-based Local Deals tool, which surfaces savings from regional and local businesses by postcode. Employees can even suggest local businesses they’d like to see added.
Trusted by organisations across the UK
Why do employee savings benefits matter to HR?
A savings scheme is one of the few benefits that employees notice and use every week, not just when something goes wrong. That makes it unusually powerful as an engagement and retention tool, because the value is visible and personal from day one.
It addresses financial wellbeing directly
With household budgets under pressure, a saving on the weekly shop or a discount on a regular purchase has an immediate and tangible impact on take-home value. And for employees who aren’t facing financial pressure, higher discretionary spend simply means more Reward Beans.
Easy to communicate and easy to understand
Unlike some benefits, a savings scheme needs very little explanation. Employees understand the value immediately, which means uptake tends to be higher and communication simpler than for more complex benefits.
It’s relevant across the workforce
Whether your workforce is desk-based, on the road or frontline, full-time or part-time, everyone shops. It can provide value across different roles, salary levels and working patterns, making it one of the most widely relevant benefits an employer can offer.
Using Reward Beans to reward your people
Beyond everyday saving, employers can use Reward Beans to recognise and reward employees through the My Group portal. Each person can then choose how and when to use their reward.
This works well as a flexible alternative to a fixed gift voucher, without the restrictions that come with a single-retailer card, and without the administrative overhead of managing voucher distribution manually. Employees receive their Reward Beans directly in their My Group portal account and can choose how and when to use them.
For structured recognition programmes, long service awards and incentive campaigns, My Recognition provides employers with dedicated recognition tools alongside the everyday savings scheme.
Talk to us about employee discounts
We can show you how the scheme works, explain the retailer coverage and talk through how we would launch it across your workforce. The scheme is designed to be straightforward to set up, and we can help employees understand how to use it and where they can save.
Frequently Asked Questions
An employee discount scheme is a benefit that gives employees access to savings on everyday purchases through their employer. These savings are usually available through a digital portal and can include discounted gift cards, cashback, promotions and exclusive promo codes across a wide range of retailers.
Employee cashback is a saving mechanism where employees follow a link from the My Group portal to a participating retailer’s website and shop as normal. A percentage of their spend is credited to their Reward Beans balance within the My Group portal once the purchase is confirmed.
Employee promo codes are exclusive promotional codes available through an employer’s benefits portal. Employees enter the code at the retailer’s checkout to receive the stated saving. Unlike many publicly available codes, the offers are curated for portal members and verified before use.
Savings depend on how often employees use the scheme, where they shop and the offers available. As an illustration, a family using discounted gift cards for its weekly grocery shop and earning Reward Beans on clothing purchases could save and earn more than £400 over a year without changing where it shops or what it buys. Employees using the scheme for travel, technology and other higher-value purchases may save more.
The scheme includes major UK supermarkets, with discounted gift cards and cashback offers available at retailers including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Aldi and Asda. Available gift cards, cashback, promotions and saving rates vary by retailer and may change over time.
In most cases, employees can continue collecting loyalty points and using eligible offers because the gift card is used as the payment method. Individual retailer terms and exclusions may apply.
Some employee gift vouchers may qualify as trivial benefits where all HMRC conditions are met. Broadly, the benefit must cost £50 or less, must not be cash or a cash voucher, must not be a contractual entitlement or provided through salary sacrifice, and must not be given as a reward for work or performance. Different rules can apply to recognition and incentive schemes, so employers should take advice based on their specific circumstances.
Yes. Employers can give Reward Beans directly to employees as a flexible reward, which employees can use towards gift cards and other options available through the My Group portal. For more structured recognition programmes, My Recognition provides dedicated tools alongside the everyday savings scheme.
No. The scheme works for organisations of different sizes, and we tailor the setup and launch to fit your workforce.