How xDesign grew 600% and maintained its culture with YuLife

This hybrid tech company has spent 12 years supporting top-tier brands in the building of integrated teams, and high-quality digital products – but in the past three years, it’s been scaling rapidly.

Growing from 50 employees to over 400, xDesign realised they had to ramp up their employee benefits in these three key areas: 

1) Introducing mental health support 

2) Providing attractive benefits that delivered everyday value to employees  

3) Increasing engagement with benefits  

The challenge

“We’re continuing to grow quickly, and a primary goal is to remain a people-first business during this period, and to not lose that sense of community we have,” explains Ciji Duncan, xDesign’s Chief People Officer. 

xDesign was certified as one of UK’s ‘Great places to work in 2022’, and ranked #1 on UK’s Best Workplaces in Tech 2022 – but they didn’t want to stop there. “We want to ensure our workplace is still inclusive, supported and connected.” And a new and improved benefits package was the perfect opportunity to ensure it maintained its people-first culture throughout this rapid growth. 

Why YuLife?

Many of the insurance and benefits packages xDesign's people team explored only offered a solution to one of their problems, but lacked in other areas. That’s where YuLife came in.

“YuLife gives us the full package,” says Ciji. “It gives us financial wellbeing, it gives us mental wellbeing with EAP and physical wellbeing with people going out, doing their steps, and with Virtual GP. That's all incredibly important to us as a business.” 

1) Mental health support

YuLife’s preventative approach to mental health – “encouraging people to go out, get some fresh air, and meditate” – was one factor, alongside Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) support that would be readily available whenever and wherever it was needed. “They have someone that they can speak to independently. [Our people] needed that extra support, and an EAP really gave that to us,” says Ciji. 

2) Everyday value for employees

With YuLife’s Employee App, healthy living is made fun with a gamified approach to incentivise employees to participate in daily wellness activities such as walking, cycling and mindfulness in exchange for YuCoin (YuLife’s virtual wellbeing currency). With up to £245 in YuCoin available annually to each employee, they can redeem their earnings for discounts and vouchers at major brands and food retailers. 

“It was about having mental health [benefits] and making sure [...] that we had life insurance, but it was also about how we could get the most out of this benefit. Having people go out and track their steps, and get points for it, and then redeem them against other rewards… that is a big driving factor for us.” 



3) Engagement with insurance and benefits 

Before investing in YuLife, xDesign had basic policy benefits. “We never had any external benefits really, other than our life insurance, which just sat there and didn't do anything for us,” says Ciji. 

Only 20% of employees engage with health and wellbeing benefits, according to HR Magazine. But xDesign saw how YuLife’s gamified insurance app could enable them to foster a culture of wellbeing in a hybrid workforce, with average download rates of 70% and a 5x increase in Employee Assistance Programme and Virtual GP utilisation rates.

“People didn't need to log into a portal through systems at work,” Ciji says. “They could have [the app] on their phone when they were anywhere, and they could connect with their colleagues and stay connected to so many other different things as well.”

The results

With YuLife’s Group Life Insurance, xDesign is receiving 13x the investment value in wellbeing benefits.

“Being able to log onto the YuLife portal and just see the overall uptake of our employees – who's using it, who's interested, who's made a Yumoji, who has walked, who's been active – is a really important data point for us as a people team, to be able to feedback any key bits of information to our leaders,” says Hayley Raeper, People Lead. 

And the results seen in the portal haven’t disappointed. “YuLife has had a massive impact on our engagement levels,” she says. “The gamification really helped people get involved, and compete against each other lightly, and go outdoors and get walking.” 

Not only are people taking better care of their mental health, engaging in more physical activity, and deriving the support that they need through extra Employee Assistance Programme resources – but it’s also helped reinforce xDesign’s people-first culture.

“I think it has had an impact on our culture and community,” says Ciji. “It was one of the first benefits that we implemented that told people we took our benefits incredibly seriously.”