How Wagestream’s bespoke gifts create social impact & provide a warm welcome for new employees

Who: Wagestream is the financial wellbeing app for millions of frontline workers.

When: We’ve partnered on onboarding gifts since 2021

What: New employee gift boxes packed with sustainable food and drink, ordered as and when required through our Gifting Platform.

Results: To date we’ve delivered 260 ethical onboarding gift boxes and counting which have helped, among other things, to prevent food waste and source Fairtrade cacao from a co-operative of female farmers in Ghana.

A welcome employee experience for new starters

Wagestream supports waged workers in a range of industries by enabling advances on their salary, providing access to a coach and other financial wellbeing initiatives. Partnering with employers to offer the app as a job benefit, in a 2022 TechCrunch article, Chief Technology Officer, Portman Wills, is cited as saying that employers see Wagestream “as a sweetener when they are recruiting staff and also to help with reducing employee churn, which is a persistent problem in the waged-working world.” 

So many employers think it’s a grand idea that the fintech app has been in the press for its speed of scale. The business is the fastest growing social impact company (it’s part-owned by impact funds and financial charities like Social Tech Trust and Big Society Capital, among others), so new starters are joining the team regularly.

Since Wagestream is an impact business that has the wellbeing of workers at its heart, it’s no surprise its own staff are treated to a warm welcome with social purpose baked in. In fact, as we mention in our own ethical onboarding guide, such a thoughtful onboarding experience has been shown to improve employee retention by 82%. 

Purpose-driven new joiner gifts drawn down from the Team Gifting Platform 

Rachel Goddard, Office and Facilities Manager, explains: “Soon after after I accepted the role with Wagesteam, I got this beautiful gift hamper through the post a week before I started. It was full of goodies, some Wagestream branded merch and then lots of nice nibbles and drinks. And that’s what we do for every new starter here.”

The welcome gift for new team members is just one part of a broader culture (and business mission!) that centres employee wellbeing. “The employee culture here at Wagestream is focused on people having the best experience,” continues Rachel. “The whole office is geared up to make staff feel really at home. There’s many lovely perks for everybody that works here including a great event space – an olde English pub on the top floor for the staff to relax and enjoy. And I think just reaching out to people before they join and sending them those gift boxes, it just sets the tone.”

To enable their gifting campaign, we created a bespoke onboarding gift box together with a mix of our social impact food and drink and Wagestream’s existing merch. We added this product onto their Team Gifting Platform account, and Rachel and her team order the gift boxes directly from there whenever new joiners start in the business. The parcels are delivered to their homes a few days before their start with a welcome message. 

“We’ve had three new starters join this week,” Rachel adds, “and every single one of them commented on how lovely it was to receive our gift hamper. Personally, I think it’s just a really thoughtful way to welcome new employees right from the start.”

The new starters agree, like Solutions Consultant Tom Lake, who joined the fintech in May 2024 following a £17.5m fundraise, and says: “It was an unexpected surprise when I received my onboarding hamper! A really nice touch and a great way to feel welcomed to the team. Starting a new role can be pretty nerve racking, so this went a long way. It’s clear that a lot of thought went into the hamper, which made it feel like a personalised welcome.”

Sustainable onboarding merch and gifts that help to save food waste and fund Fairtrade cacao

“All the organisations that sell on the Social Supermarket Platform have got a social purpose,” explains Rachel. “We all want to shop with small independent buyers these days, for that personal touch, but these have got the social mission behind them too so they go one step further.”

The food and drink that’s included in Wagestream’s sustainable gifts for new employees alongside their branded merchandise almost all has the same social impact: saving food waste. This makes for a powerful story for recipients when unboxing their gifts. 

Drinks saving surplus, fresh bread 

What’s the problem with food waste?

Globally we waste one third of all food. When food waste goes in the bin it releases methane gas as it breaks down, which “is 25 times more harmful than carbon dioxide because it can trap heat within the atmosphere,” according to Business Waste. That waste has a carbon footprint of 3.3 Gt CO2e. Compare that with the carbon footprint of global nations? It’d be the third top emitter after the USA and China.

This issue is all the more pressing for the UK considering that here we throw away around 9.5 million tonnes of food a year, despite 8.4 million people being in food poverty.

Thanks to the drinks included in the Wagestream onboarding boxes from Toast Brewing and Crumbs Brewing, though, the business has so far saved over 1,000 slices of slices of surplus fresh bread – helping to save some of the 400,000 tonnes of bread we waste every year in the UK (bread is one of the UK’s most wasted foods). 

Crumbs Brewing reported that the value of the carbon saved from the beers in Wagestream’s onboarding gifts save around 3kg of CO2e vs a ‘regular’ beer. They replace 25% of the malt usually used for brewing with crumbed bread that would otherwise go to waste. This alone reduces the purpose-led brand’s GWP by 4.2 tonnes of CO2 eq every year (over 10% of the carbon footprint of the product ingredients overall.)

Snacks saving would-be wasted fruit

Wagestream has also so far saved 200 wonky apples, thanks to the Güsto crisps that are included in these new joiner gifts. The crisps take perfectly edible fruit that has been rejected by the likes of supermarkets down to their shape, size or colour and turn them into air-dried snacks. The snack bags have so far saved the equivalent of 15.6kg of would-be wasted fruit. 

Chocolate funding Fairtrade cacao for a female-led co-operative

Together with these sustainable drinks and apple crisps, Wagestream’s onboarding gifts include two Divine Chocolate bars. As a Fairtrade pioneer, Divine Chocolate have been working since the late 90’s to empower smallholder farmers. Farmers from the Kuapa Kokoo Farmers’ Union, a co-operative of around 100,000 cocoa farmers in Ghana, make up 44% of the Divine Chocolate shareholders. 

Every kilo of Fairtrade cocoa means more profits giving farmers a sustainable income, allowing them to invest in their families and community. So far the amount of Fairtrade cocoa purchased is equivalent to 8.892 kilos for the 38% Salted Caramel bar and 10.53 kilos for the 45% Milk Chocolate bar within Wagestream’s gifts.

Social impact for a social purpose company

The fintech business accesses and draws down on their bespoke gifts through our Corporate Gifting Platform, on a “SME” subscription, which, like our Starter tier, allows the team to access their impact report that details the positive social change these new team gifts are creating. 

With the fintech’s rate of growth and onboarding boxes regularly going out to new employees, Wagestream’s positive social impact is only set to grow. As they continue to invest in thoughtful, sustainable gifting, they’ll be well-placed to leverage these impact reports to communicate such achievements in saving food waste and investing in Fairtrade.

Learn more about sustainable onboarding practices for your team, explore our gift range and speak to us to create your own new starter gifts