Startups are fast-paced, lean, and agile. And while they’re collaborative and creative there can be a tradeoff in culture as they strive to succeed.By partnering with YuLife, Manchester tech startup Culture Shift was able to provide a comprehensive employee benefits package that belies its small size, and provides a measurable impact on its culture:89% have downloaded the YuLife app100% are using it monthly 41 million total steps recorded 2,354 mindful minutes synced 270,830 YuCoin earnedWith ‘culture’ in its name, a people-first approach to wellbeing wasn’t an option for the tech startup. “We wanted to start as we meant to go on with our benefits package,” explains co-founder and CEO Gemma McCall. “But as a startup, it’s quite difficult with few employees because it’s actually really expensive and often cost prohibitive to do so.” As a tech-for-good organisation, Culture Shift creates safe environments in work and study spaces. Its software allows witnesses or victims of harassment, bullying, or discrimination to report their experience – and gives them access to support and resources.From the outset, Culture Shift wanted to create the type of culture that they’re promoting internally – “we have to walk the walk” – and employee benefits had a key role to play. “We first introduced YuLife to Culture Shift about a year-and-a-half ago. It was just after we had raised our first seed round. We had the fuel in the tank to really recruit people,” explains Gemma.Meeting the demands of startup cultureThe tech startup space is one of the most high-pressure and stressful environments to work in. The stakes are high, with research showing that 70% of tech startups fail after just one year.With high-growth targets and limited timelines, an always-on culture can cascade from the top. But not for Culture Shift: “Employee health and wellbeing, and the sense of responsibility that I have as CEO to look after our team is really core to who we are and what we do at Culture Shift,” says Gemma. “We wouldn't be living up to our values if we weren't centring on employee wellness at all times. There are lots of things that we do across the business to build that. But YuLife is a core option, and allows us to measure some of that impact.” Employee health and wellbeing is really core to who we are and what we do at Culture Shift.The focus on wellness was just one of the reasons the business chose YuLife. When researching an employee benefits solution with a benefits consultant, they had three considerations: providing life insurance, seeing a return on investment and developing a recruitment edge. “They had no benefits in place. For them, it was about making the right investment that was going to give them the most value for money, that was really going to resonate with their employee base,” says Martin Pye, Employee Benefits Consultant at Mercer Marsh Benefits.The solution 1) Life insurance Despite being a small-sized business with a young workforce, personal experiences dictated Gemma’s drive to include life insurance amongst their offering – what she believes is a prerequisite of a well-rounded wellbeing benefits provision. “I think death in service, and our health insurance, are the two biggest value things that people can benefit from the package that we offer at Culture Shift,” says Gemma. “But, those are things that you need when things go wrong. I've had friends and connections who, unfortunately, have had to use that death in service when a partner has died – people who haven't had life insurance, but their employers have had death in service – which has saved them at their time of need, because it's meant that they've been able to pay off the mortgage, for example. I think it's really important that assurance is there for people.” 2) Return on investment“ROI is massively important to us as a business. We want every penny spent to provide tangible benefits,” says Ash McDowell, Financial Director at Culture Shift. “The reason we were attracted to YuLife was because not only did it allow us to provide the death in service insurance that we really wanted to give to our growing team, but it was the added benefits that YuLife includes,” says Gemma “It meant that we could gamify some of the things that we wanted to do and really keep looking after people’s wellness.” ROI is massively important to us as a business. We want every penny spent to provide tangible benefits.The YuLife app allows Culture Shift’s people to gain daily value from their employee benefits: encouraging the team to live healthier lives through challenges to walk, meditate and cycle. With the incentive of tangible rewards – from Amazon to Aldi vouchers, discounts with leading brands, or tree planting and ocean cleaning – there is motivation for everyone. In-app access to mental and physical healthcare is also highly valued as an addition to insurance. “The virtual GP appointments, and our EAP, we regularly encourage people to access,” says Gemma. “I say those three letters a lot, not because people are needing to access them because of what we do at Culture Shift, but because people’s lives are difficult and we’ve got such a huge range of things that have happened over the last few years.”3) Recruitment edgeAccording to a 2018 study conducted by SHRM, 92% of surveyed workers report that benefits packages are highly important in helping to make their decision to join a company, and their overall contentment with their job. Meanwhile, a third of them said that their lack of access to benefits at their current position was the main reason they wanted to find new employment within the next year.“As a startup, you can't necessarily pay the highest salaries,” says Gemma. “And when budgets are tight and staff is limited, it’s hard to offer a competitive benefits package.” But it can be a worthwhile investment, says Gemma: “If you have an organisation like we have with real purpose at its core, and you walk the walk in terms of how you look after your people, people may take a slight salary sacrifice in order to have those things.” The results“The fact that our staff were engaging with it, and really shouting about the benefits, made us believe that it was definitely a worthwhile investment,” says Ash. As Gemma says, ongoing engagement can be, “such a flash-in-the-pan. As an organisation, you are paying for it, and you pay for it because you want people to use it. But the thing that we've seen across the YuLife dashboard is that it's consistently used, which I think is really, really good.” And the results at Culture Shift have been seen and felt: 89% of the team have downloaded the app already and 100% of those are using it monthly, 41 million steps have been recorded so far with daily step counts 18% higher than the UK average.“YuLife has allowed Culture Shift to offer a range of different things that we probably would’ve had to have gone and sought with a lot of different suppliers,” says Gemma. With YuLife, they could provide an extensive benefits and insurance package – life insurance, Virtual GP, EAP – alongside health and wellbeing benefits that boosted its sense of community and wellness within the workplace. “YuLife has made a really big difference to our day-to-day culture, actually. We're quite a competitive bunch and we are all always talking about who is at the top of the leaderboard from the steps perspective,” admits Gemma. Culture Shift has since been named a ‘Great Place To Work’ with 100% of employees claiming the workplace is ‘fair and equitable’. 100% of workers also report that the workplace has fair treatment with everyone feeling like they belong. “The fact that we’ve been able to build a really comprehensive benefits package that everyone across the team can benefit from, and their families, makes me so proud,” says Gemma.