Our festive episode reflecting on the first year of the Friends with Benefits podcast — plus Santa drops by with the world’s biggest benefit wishes.
In this Christmas Special, Carl and David look back on a standout first year for the Friends with Benefits podcast — from launching the format to hosting guests who challenged conventional thinking in reward and benefits.
The conversation covers reflections on standout episodes, why passion-led discussions matter more than scripted topics, and what themes are likely to dominate 2026. A surprise appearance from Santa (Seb) introduces a series of benefit “wishes” submitted by consultants, reward leaders, and managers — sparking honest discussion around AI, inclusion, pay transparency, engagement, and global complexity.
The episode closes with a look ahead to what’s shaping up to be a big year for benefits.
00:00 — Intro
00:39 — Reflecting on a Big First Year
01:00 — Why the Podcast Matters
01:41 — Letting Guests Talk About What They Care About
02:00 — A Standout Moment: Josephina from British Airways
02:34 — Purposeful Communication Over Noise
03:00 — Why Passion Creates Better Conversations
06:00 — Inclusion and Choice in Benefits
07:00 — Pay Transparency Is Coming (Whether You Like It or Not)
08:17 — Rethinking ‘Engagement’ in Benefits
09:19 — Global Complexity Isn’t Going Away
11:05 — Looking Ahead to 2026
Josephina Smith, Reward and Recognition Director at British Airways, joins Carl and David to explore the shift from financial wellbeing to financial empowerment — and why employers must think differently if they want people to make better financial decisions.
She breaks down the global design of BA’s award-winning financial empowerment program, the real drivers behind the pension gender gap, why reward must be seen as a value-creation function (not an admin one), and the mindset needed to successfully drive change inside a large organisation.
00:00 — Intro
00:45 — A Career Built on Change and Making a Difference
02:00 — Why Reward? Exposure, Emotion, and Influence
05:30 — Salary Sacrifice Reform: Cost, Uncertainty, Planning
08:45 — Why BA Chose Financial Empowerment Over Wellbeing
12:30 — Making It Global: No Copy-Paste Policies
15:30 — The Pension Gender Gap: A Systemic Problem
19:00 — Reward as a Strategic Function, Not Admin
23:00 — Risk, Reputation, and Legislative Awareness
28:00 — Change-Making: Courage and Intentionality
33:00 — Final Advice for Change Makers
Be the first to know when new episodes drop! Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thanksben/
What happens when one of the earliest flexible-benefits pioneers looks at the industry today — and realises many of the same issues still haven’t been fixed?
Tony Nevin has spent over four decades in reward and benefits, working as an advisor, consultant, practitioner, entrepreneur, and one of the earliest team members at Thomsons (later Darwin, now Mercer).
Tony joins Carl and David to reflect on four decades in benefits — from the birth of flex, to the pitfalls of tech, to the ongoing struggles with admin, comms, and engagement.
They cover salary sacrifice reform, focus groups on factory floors, carers’ benefits, medical inflation, neurodiversity, and the hard truth that HR and finance often underestimate the strategic impact of benefits.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 — Intro
00:45 — 43 Years, a Green Suit, and an Accidental Career
02:00 — The Moment Flexible Benefits Were Born
03:30 — “The Problem Hasn’t Been Solved Yet”
05:30 — Salary Sacrifice: Easy for Government, Hard on Employees
08:45 — Engagement as the Real Bottom Line
12:30 — Benefits Aren’t Important… Unless You Make Them Important
16:00 — The Whiteboard Reality Check
19:00 — Carers Are the New Frontier of Workforce Support
23:30 — ADHD, Self-Understanding, and New Communication Patterns
27:00 — The 80% Open-Rate Email
30:30 — The Job, Defined Simply
Be the first to know when new episodes drop! Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thanksben/
What happens when benchmarking becomes a comfort blanket — and the industry forgets what flexibility really means?
In this episode, Christina Alliak, Director of Benefits at Cohesity, joins Carl and David to explore how the industry got tangled up in comparison reports and legacy systems, and what it’ll take to build something better. Together, they dig into the messy middle between aspiration and reality — from flexible benefits dreams and ancient insurer tech to admin overload, prevention vs. intervention, and the one mistake that taught Christina her biggest lesson about communication.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 — Intro
03:30 — AI Everywhere (and the Boring Stuff It Should Fix)
05:00 — The Catch: How Do You Learn Without the Boring Work?
08:00 — Benchmarking Is Overrated
10:00 — The Dream of Open Data
13:00 — The Trap of Ease and Expectation
14:30 — Medical Inflation and the Benchmark Box
18:00 — Prevention Beats Intervention
20:00 — Flexibility: The Holy Grail
23:00 — The Dream Model
27:00 — The Marketplace Vision
29:00 — HR Tech, Product Thinking, and Delight
31:00 — The Hidden Cost of Admin
34:00 — Standards, APIs, and Stalemate
41:00 — What AI Needs to Work
43:00 — The Future (and AI Burnout)
Be the first to know when new episodes drop! Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thanksben/
What happens when employee benefits get too complicated, too noisy — and people stop caring?
In this episode of Friends With Benefits, we sit down with Will Winter Smith, Reward Director at Halfords, to explore why traditional benefits strategies are no longer landing with today’s workforce. From private medical that “lost its way” to too many bolt-on products and confusing comms, Will shares a refreshingly honest look at what’s broken — and what actually gets people to engage.
00:00 — Engagement Is Key
03:00 — Private Medical Has Lost Its Way
08:00 — Product Overload and Noise
16:00 — Benchmarking and the Same-Same Trap
17:00 — We’re Retailers to Our Colleagues
21:00 — Guerrilla Marketing and Disruptive Moments
25:00 — ROI and Knowing When to Stop
31:00 — AI Is Like Teaching a Toddler Origami
38:00 — Culture and Trust Around AI
Be the first to know when new episodes drop! Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thanksben/
What does it really look like when you build benefits with inclusion, equity, and integrity from someone who’s worked in both Big Tech and policy?
In this episode of Friends With Benefits, we sit down with Lee from Block (formerly at Google) to dig into what “equity by design” actually means in a global company. Lee shares honest lessons about balancing equality vs equity, navigating local trade‑offs, and why the numbers you benchmark with might mislead more than help.
00:00 — From Social Work to Global Benefits
14:00 — Beyond Tick-Box DEI
28:00 — Building Global Minimums That Scale
35:00 — Communication as an Equity Issue
39:00 — Can AI Help?
46:00 — Practical Steps for Inclusive BenefitsBe the first to know when new episodes drop!
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thanksben/
In this episode of Friends with Benefits, David sits down with global benefits leader Mark to break down the hard-earned lessons from rolling out benefits tech across 50+ countries.From why engagement isn’t just a comms problem to how AI could derail more than it helps, this episode gets into the operational realities most people don’t talk about.They unpack:— Why most global rollouts miss the mark on engagement— How to design for personalisation at scale— The role of consistency vs. autonomy across regions— Where AI fits in and where it really doesn’t— What benefits teams can learn from product teamsIf you’re navigating complexity, scaling strategy, or just trying to get your benefits platform actually used this one’s for you.Timestamps: 00:00 – Getting into Benefits03:50 – Health Benefits Are Underused08:15 – Benefits Are Designed, Not Just Delivered10:45 – The Local vs. Global Trap17:20 – Post-Launch is the Real Work21:50 – Measuring Impact24:40 – The Personalisation Gap36:00 – The Marketing Mindset43:50 – AI, Structure & Scale47:10 – Benefits ConfessionThanks for watching! Subscribe to our channel.
In this episode of Friends with Benefits, Carl and David are joined by Steve Bianchi ex-Unilever, now Chief People Officer at Autodoc. Steve brings his systems mindset, startup grit, and global experience to the table as they unpack everything from UK healthcare policy to why payroll is the most underused channel in benefits comms.
They discuss the limits of fairness, the value of radical transparency, the true cost of “workations,” and why benefit strategies need to move from one-size-fits-all to hyper-personalised at scale. No fluff just sharp, structured thinking from someone who’s built benefits from the ground up.
00:00 – Should companies fill NHS gaps?
08:00 – The real shift post-pandemic
10:00 – Why prevention gets ignored
14:00 – Reimagining the value of healthcare
15:00 – How to build a benefits strategy from scratch
19:00 – Recognition as a benefit
25:00 – Career frameworks as proprietary benefits
27:00 – Trust and transparency over fairness
30:00 – The problem with intangible rewards
35:00 – What matters changes with life stage
38:00 – Why we’re failing on comms
40:00 – Hyper-personalisation is already here
44:00 – Should performance-based benefits exist?
49:00 – What great rewards leaders do now
52:00 – Steve’s Benefit Confession
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thanksben/
In this episode of Friends with Benefits, Carl and David sit down with Jo Viana, Director of Global Benefits at Eventbrite, to get real about what it takes to build benefits that actually matter especially when you’re supporting people across 9+ countries. They dive into the messy realities of global equity, the limits of utilisation metrics, why mental health needs more than a tick-box, and how communication can make or break your benefits strategy. It’s honest, sharp, and full of lessons from someone who's doing the work.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Meet Joana & the Eventbrite landscape
04:30 – The equity balancing act
08:00 – Mental health: usage ≠ impact
15:00 – Breaking stigma through storytelling
22:00 – Making benefits visible
26:00 – AI, access, and cautious optimism
37:00 – When redundancy matters
41:00 – Benefits Confession
Be the first to know when new episodes drop! Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thanksben/
Benefits are bloated. Data is broken. ROI is murky. But people still need support that works.
In this episode of Friends with Benefits, we're joined by John Whitaker, Senior Director of International Benefits at Workday. From decluttering bloated benefit portfolios to the real reasons wellbeing ROI is so hard to prove, John brings a refreshingly honest view of what actually matters in the benefits space. We cover global cost pressures, benefit duplication, the data gaps still holding us back, and why sometimes the best employee experience is just making things work.
Tune in for practical insights, hard truths, and a few benefit confessions you won't forget.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome & intro to John from Workday
03:00 – Why having more benefits isn’t better
07:40 – Wellbeing fatigue & lack of results
12:00 – Budget ≠ impact
14:00 – Personalisation over standardisation
19:00 – Data gaps still hurt decision-making
23:00 – Admin vs. strategy
30:00 – The problem with proving ROI
33:00 – Living your values through benefits
38:00 – Cutting costs without cutting care
40:00 – The value of simplification
42:00 – Benefit confession
Be the first to know when new episodes drop! Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thanksben/
In the very first episode of Friends with Benefits, Carl and David kick things off by diving into the tangled world of employee benefits and why it’s getting harder for companies to get it right.
They share their own career journeys, but more importantly, they lay the foundation for the conversations to come: honest chats with reward leaders, brokers, and consultants who are shaping the future of work.
Timestamps:
02:00 – Why This Podcast Exists
03:00 – The Complexity of Benefits
04:00 – Why Benefits Are Under-Leveraged
06:00 – The Role of Employee Expectations
08:00 – What’s Coming Up on the Podcast
10:00 – Themes to Watch For
17:00 – The AI Question
21:00 – Benefits Confessions
23:00 – Closing Thoughts