Unpacking it all: Primark's benefits collection

What happens when a high-street fashion powerhouse, known as the value-for-money fashion destination, decides to shake up the way it talks about colleague benefits?

Primark’s emergence as a global high-street icon has been a phenomenon. But as with any meteoric rise, things can get left behind. It’s a story we see all the time: as the business grew, important information about rewards and benefits got tucked away in different places – from posters about local discounts to additional leave policies stored safely in a corner of the intranet that no-one could locate.

Every day, customers leave Primark stores with their iconic brown paper bags stuffed full of exciting buys. And the retailer had done a similar job of cramming a great haul of colleague benefits into their offer. The problem was finding them.  

So, the team asked us to help UK colleagues – all 30,000 of them – to understand, use and truly value their full benefits package.  

So much on offer. Now easier to find.

The challenge wasn't simply to centralise information. It was to create an experience that delivered ease, value – and even fun!

With most colleagues based out on the retail floor or in warehouses, Primark’s colleague app, ZING is the place for finding info about all things work – from schedule-wrangling and pay queries to celebrating local events.  

We knew that ZING was the natural home for benefits too. We began to build an interactive, mobile-first resource, with the goal of empowering colleagues to easily check their Primark perks on the bus, in the kitchen or on a break. (It would need to work beautifully on desktop too).

Along the journey we:

• Co-created with our users. Working closely with Primark colleagues throughout the development process made sure we built something that reflected real needs and behaviours, rather than assumptions.

• Designed around how people search. User research showed that colleagues sometimes think in terms of benefit categories (such as time off or healthcare) and sometimes in terms of life events. We built dual navigation, encompassing both, to help people find information quicky and intuitively.

• Championed relatability. Colleagues want to know what these benefits will actually do for them – they don’t always need the small print up front. So, we focused on bringing them to life in plain English, making it easy for users to understand just how much they get out of being part of Primark.

The ultimate haul

We knew that we needed to give Primark colleagues something new, punchy and bold – to capture their attention and keep it.

We developed a striking visual identity, playing with Primark’s iconic brown bag to make it the key image for our site. Just as popping into Primark always reveals there’s more in store, we invited our audience to find out ‘what’s in their bag’.

Locating the site within Primark’s existing digital ecosystem made it easy to dip into. That’s perfect for busy, on-the-go colleagues who simply want to know what’s on offer – and want to find it on their phones.

Bringing everything together in one easy-to-find place is a game-changer in itself, boosting access and awareness in a single hit.

The microsite also becomes a flexible platform to bring benefits to life – from colleague stories to dynamic widgets that can spotlight specific benefits.  

The uplift transforms the site from a static, universal library into a proactive comms channel that makes benefits part of the everyday fun of working for Primark.

User experience at the heart

In the first 2 weeks since launch, we have had over

• 24,670 hits on the site
• 2,497 unique users
• 7.5% of retail assistants have accessed the site

• 16% increase in use of some existing benefits, including discounts.  

Colleagues who tested the site prior to launch said:
“I know exactly where to go now to find out everything I need to know about my benefits.”

“We have been crying out for something like this. This will change the way we get information out to our colleagues.”  

“I was surprised to realise just how much was on offer from Primark. I had no idea we had so many benefits available to us.”

By pulling everything together into one intuitive, all-action microsite, it’s now super-easy for Primark colleagues to explore what’s ‘in their bag’. And that’s transformative when it comes to the way colleagues engage with their rewards package.

The microsite makes it simple for colleagues to explore what’s available, understand the value of their benefits and find support when they need it.

It also tells another vital story about Primark’s commitment to colleague wellbeing and reward: a stronger employee value proposition that walks the talk.