
Sustainability in Business: Eco-Friendly Employee Rewards
23 July 2025
Sustainability in business practices is becoming increasingly essential to potential employees, partners, and consumers. When it comes to saying thank you to your people, there's a balancing act between finding the perfect employee reward and your business's budget. The trick is to offer something that will have a significant impact on your people without harming the environment—or your bottom line. Whether you’re looking at year-round employee rewards or planning for Christmas, in this blog we’ll explore the importance of eco-friendly digital rewards.
In a rush? Here are some key takeaways...
- Eco-friendly rewards resonate with modern employees: Sustainable digital rewards—such as e-vouchers and virtual cashback—align with employee values, demonstrating that you care about both the planet and your people, strengthening your employer brand and helping attract and retain talent.
- Recognition boosts engagement and loyalty: Over 60% of employees may leave if they feel unappreciated. Eco-conscious recognition—such as digital vouchers or time off—enhances employee satisfaction, drives productivity, and improves retention.
- Digital rewards are efficient, secure, and scalable: eVouchers are instant, flexible, and cost-effective. They’re ideal for remote teams and reduce admin load. Pluxee UK only bills eVoucher Cheques on redemption, saving money and time.
- Sustainable options go beyond cash: Offer non-financial rewards, such as paid volunteering, time off, or charity donations. These low-carbon, high-impact options improve wellbeing and demonstrate a genuine commitment to CSR.
- Ideal for peak seasons like Christmas: Digital rewards make excellent, low-effort Christmas gifts. They’re fast to distribute, customisable, and empower employees to choose what matters to them—while reducing waste and logistics headaches.
If you've got time to stick around, let's dive a little deeper.
We started the eco-friendly perks conversation with our blog, ‘Sustainable Business Practices: Eco-friendly Benefits’. For this blog, the focus will be entirely on sustainable rewards, like digital vouchers and virtual cashback.

Why do eco-friendly employee rewards matter?
Employee rewards matter because your workforce is more engaged when you recognise their achievements. Eco-friendly rewards make a bigger impact because sustainability is important to your employees.
50% of employees agree that receiving gratitude and recognition from management improves their relationships with company leaders (Eadion).
Employees want to work for an employer with strong CSR credentials, a topic we cover in more depth in our blog, ‘Sustainable Business Practices: Eco-friendly Benefits’. When you embed eco-friendly rewards into your people strategy, you’re showing your employees that you appreciate their efforts and their values.
What are the business benefits of eco-friendly employee rewards?
There are numerous business benefits to eco-friendly employee rewards, including boosting employee engagement, supporting Net Zero and carbon-reduction commitments, enhancing employee loyalty, and becoming an employer of choice.
As we discuss in our blog, ‘Let's Boost the Employee Experience with Recognition’, 66% of employees would leave their roles if they felt unappreciated by their employer--that’s how vital recognition is in reducing the risk of high employee turnover rates.
Rewarding and reinforcing behaviours = higher rates of productivity and loyalty.

Boosting employee engagement
Engaged employees generate 43% more revenue for businesses when compared to companies with disengaged workforces (Hay Group). Eco-friendly employee rewards meet employees’ needs and values, improving satisfaction and engagement.
Positive workplace culture
Employee rewards encourage your workforce to continue smashing their targets, model desired behaviours, and align with your core values. A rewarding culture is a happy culture, helping to engage and retain your talent.
Supporting CSR commitments
Switching from paper and plastic rewards cards to digital vouchers and eVoucher Cheques can significantly reduce your carbon footprint, helping your business reach Net Zero. You’ll be able to document this transition as part of your carbon reduction plan, solidifying your commitment to sustainability in business.
Improving employee loyalty
Engaged employees are more likely to become loyal employees, committed to the success of your business. A strong rewards strategy, that encourages employees to align with your values, solidified by a trusted commitment to sustainability in business, will help nurture a loyal workforce.
Becoming an employer of choice
When you improve employee engagement and loyalty, your employee retention rates will increase, your eNPS (employee net promoter scores) will climb, and you’ll be in a better position to attract top talent and become an employer of choice.
Eco-friendly reward ideas for employees
We’ve mentioned some sustainable rewards, such as digital vouchers, already, but eVouchers and financial rewards aren’t the only options available to you. We discuss non-monetary employee rewards examples here - 11 Examples of non-financial rewards – and the benefits they bring to your rewards strategy. Here, we’ll explore other ways you can reward employees sustainably.
Matching charitable donations
As we explore in our blog on non-financial employee rewards, not all employees desire a monetary reward. Some would jump at the chance to have you gift the value of the reward to a charity of their choice. Champion your social value credentials by offering employees the option to either redeem or gift their financial rewards.

Time off
Swap the voucher for time off! Even an extra half day off can make all the difference to your busy employees. Time to sit, relax, go for a run, or even tackle life admin could be more valuable to your employees than a digital reward, and you don’t have to buy anything to give the gift of time.
Volunteering
Combine an employee’s need for more time to do what matters most with their desire to do good by giving them the option to take paid volunteering time. Many employees want to do more volunteering but struggle to fit it in during their allocated annual leave. Offering paid volunteering as an alternative to employee reward vouchers allows them to do something that replenishes their soul.
What are digital rewards?
Digital rewards sound impersonal--less tangible than a gift card, but digital rewards are simply a more sustainable and eco-friendly version of the physical alternative. The truth is, digital rewards are more secure than gifting a physical gift card or voucher, and often present more flexibility and freedom of choice.
Digital reward ideas for employees
Our eVoucher Codes, eVoucher Cheques and our Virtual Pluxee Card are digital rewards, offering financial recompense. They’re sustainable rewards that provide real value.
Digital vouchers
Digital reward vouchers for employees are versatile and bring unrivalled choices of retailers. We have two options:
- eVoucher Codes: Buy in bulk from a single retailer to maximise available discounts. We’ll send you all your codes, and you can distribute them to your employees as needed.
- eVoucher Cheques: We can send the eVoucher Cheques on your behalf, allowing employees to choose how they spend their digital reward from over 100 retail partners. The icing on the cake? We only charge you for the eVouchers your employees redeem.
More importantly, neither requires paper or plastic, making them an eco-friendly employee reward to embed into your sustainable business practices.
What are the benefits of using digital eVouchers for your employee rewards strategy?
We’ve touched on a few of the benefits of our digital vouchers above, including choice and value for money. Next, we’ll delve deeper into each benefit of using digital vouchers as part of your employee rewards strategy.
- Freedom of choice: With our eVoucher Cheques, your employees can select their preferred retailers, ensuring there’s something for everyone and a personalised experience. Employee rewards are more impactful when they resonate, and to do so, they must be inclusive and meet each employee’s unique interests or needs.
- Instant delivery: We send our vouchers digitally, straight to your employees’ inboxes or a central location. Once received, your employees can redeem their rewards immediately.
- No geographical barriers. It doesn’t matter if your workforce is remote or in multiple offices. You can issue our eVouchers on mass to various locations simultaneously for maximum impact.
- Cost-effective: eVoucher Codes are retailer-specific, and when you buy in bulk, you can negotiate a discount.* As for our eVoucher Cheques… we only bill them on redemption. If your employees don’t redeem them, we won’t charge you.
- Time efficiency: If you’re issuing employee rewards to the whole business using our eVoucher Cheques, we can handle the admin by sending them directly to each employee.
- Carbon footprint reduction: Pluxee eVouchers are digital. There’s no need to print anything. Your employees simply use their code in-store or online.
- Extra security: When you gift employees a physical gift card, it can be lost or stolen, and you wouldn’t be able to reissue the same card. The employee would either miss out on their reward, or you may be out of pocket if you give them a replacement. Digital rewards can’t be lost or stolen, and if an email does go awry, you can easily reissue the code.
- Improving financial wellbeing: Your employees can choose how they want to spend their eVoucher Cheque. They could put it towards the weekly shop during a tough month, a present for a loved one, the latest gadget, a meal out, a trip to the cinema or a weekend away… the possibilities are endless!
- Anytime rewards: Keep a stock of our digital vouchers and you can reward employees anytime for anything: long service, birthdays, anniversaries and for a job well done.
- Personalisation: If you purchase eVoucher Codes in bulk, we’ll send them to you to distribute directly, so you can add any message you wish. We can send eVoucher Cheques directly to employees on your behalf, using different messaging, voucher values, and branding, as directed by you.
- Quick turnaround: This benefit comes in incredibly handy during the Christmas rewards period, because we can turn orders around in a matter of days!
- Did you know that we’re one of the leading UK digital voucher suppliers? By building powerful and trusted partnerships with our clients, merchants and consumers, we can provide you with the best choice of retailers and money-saving deals.

What about Christmas employee reward vouchers?
eVouchers make fantastic Christmas employee rewards for the twelve reasons we’ve listed above. They offer unbeatable choice, instant delivery, serve a remote workforce, are cost-effective, reduce your carbon footprint, are more secure than physical alternatives, improve financial wellbeing, and can be personalised and branded.
Christmas is a busy period for HR professionals, and thoughtful Christmas gifts don’t necessarily require much time to plan and deliver. When you use digital vouchers as part of your Christmas rewards strategy, you’re allowing employees to choose their own gift. You can guarantee that they’ll find a use for it, spending on something that genuinely appeals to them.
Bring more moments of joy to the lives of your employees and consumers--and their families with a Christmas voucher selection as versatile as them.
Virtual Pluxee Card
We’ve explored how our Virtual Pluxee Card works as part of your reward strategy in our blog, ‘The Pluxee Card: Your Ultimate Guide’, so we won’t repeat the information here. However, we will summarise the key points below:
- Our Virtual Pluxee Card simplifies rewards: Employers can add funds to the Pluxee Card using the same employee details each time, streamlining the rewards process.
- The cashback feature maximises value: While optional, using the cashback feature increases the actual reward value—e.g., a £100 reward can become £115 with 15% cashback.
- Cost-effective strategy: The card provides a budget-friendly and sustainable way to reward employees while offering them greater value.
- Dual use: In addition to employee rewards, the Pluxee Card can serve as an ongoing employee benefit. Allowing employees to contribute their own funds helps maintain high engagement.
- Encourages long-term use: Continued use of the card helps maintain reward momentum, supporting employee satisfaction and growth.
Since we’ve touched on Christmas rewards, take a look at how Viridor used our Pluxee Card as part of their Christmas rewards to support employees during the cost-of-living crisis, giving them the gift that keeps on giving.
Pluxee UK: The partner you need to enhance your sustainable business strategy
It's clear that sustainable, digital rewards deliver for your people and business, so there's only one more question to answer: what makes Pluxee UK different to the rest?
Simple. We’re one of the leading UK digital voucher suppliers! By building powerful and trusted partnerships with our clients, merchants and consumers, we can provide you with the best choice of retailers and money-saving deals. We're also in the minority of providers who only bill on redemption.
FAQs
Why are digital vouchers better than a cash bonus?
Our eVouchers are an impactful alternative to a cash incentive. They’re like cash but better! When you deliver your employee rewards via an eVoucher, it won’t get swallowed up by monthly bills. Instead, your employees will receive something tangible, whether it's a product or an experience. Memories matter, especially when they bring more moments of joy.
Why are eVouchers so effective as an employee reward?
As well as being eco-friendly and cost-effective, our Pluxee eVouchers are versatile and flexible.
What other employee rewards solutions do you offer?
Our digital vouchers are available throughout the year and for any occasion. We create a range of quality designs to meet all your employee rewards needs. We also have our Pluxee Card!
Is there a lengthy contractual process for ordering digital vouchers?
No. You can purchase our digital vouchers as part of your Christmas rewards strategy or any other time of the year without contracting with us.
Can I limit the eVouchers to a range of retailers?
Of course! You’ll need to select our eVoucher Cheques if you wish to offer multiple retailers. You can either give your employees access to all or a select few.
Is the redemption process easy?
Yes. The process is slightly different depending on whether you select our eVoucher Codes or eVoucher Cheques for your employee rewards. eVoucher Codes are for single retailers, but with the eVoucher Cheques, your employees can select the retailers to spend with.
Do you provide printed Christmas vouchers?
We put sustainability at the heart of everything we do, which is why our Christmas vouchers are digital. How do I order my Christmas vouchers? If you want to order our digital vouchers ahead of Christmas or any other time, click here to book a call with a member of our team.