At Fair Pay Services, we’re determined to be a powerful positive force in the lives of our umbrella employees. Part of that just involves doing what you expect of us – paying you correctly and on time, supporting you as your employer and getting all the “basics” right, but it also means doing everything we can to improve your experience as a contractor.
Fair Pay Companion is a comprehensive benefits platform, packed with benefits and services to help you care for yourself and your family, make your money go further and maintain and improve your health and wellbeing. We’ve designed it specifically to make as much difference as possible to our employees, and we want you to make as much use of it as you can. With that in mind, this article covers the benefits available, so you know what they are when you need them.
Medical and support services
A range of services designed to help you care for yourself and your household, with faster access to medical care combined with support for your mental health.
Your Personal Doctor
This service gives you access to private GP appointments by phone and webcam at no cost at all to you. The service can be accessed at any time of the day or night, and from anywhere in the world that has a phone or internet connection. Where prescription medicine is required, it can be delivered anywhere in the UK.
Your medical specialist
If you need to be referred to a specialist, our access to care navigation tool can help. By accessing all the various NHS databases, it’s often possible to use cancelled or unfilled appointments, meaning you or your family member could receive treatment more quickly.
Just call the helpline and experts will guide you through the process of requesting a referral, review the surgical options available to you and provide an indication of private hospital costs if necessary.
Your care support
When a loved one falls ill, it can be difficult to know where to turn. By providing a single, expert point of contact, our Care Support service will help you navigate the care options to make sure we find the right solution. Whether you need advice on care, medical finances, property and funding or legal support, we’ll be there to help you find the best possible solution at your time of need.
Your Support and Counselling
Our umbrella company employees and their families can use our confidential helpline to speak in confidence to a fully qualified counsellor at any time of the day or night.
Our counsellors can help you with health advice across a range of medical and wellbeing services and we have expert legal and financial support available through our specialist partners.
The aim is to support you and find a solution to whatever is worrying you, but even if you just need to talk to someone, we strongly advise you to use the service. There is no limit on the number of times you can call, and everything discussed is treated in the strictest confidence.
You can also access a library of helpful written information about a wide variety of mental health issues. Self-help workbooks can be downloaded in PDF format, and comprise in-depth expert and medical information, as well as advice on how you can move forward, and contact details for specialist organisations where appropriate.
Lifestyle tools
A range of tools and services to help you maintain, manage and improve your health and wellbeing.
Your Health
There are two separate services behind the Your Health tile on your Fair Pay Companion menu page: Health for Travel, and Health assessment.
You’ll need to follow a few simple instructions to register for Health Assessment, but this only takes a few minutes. Once again, there are two main sections:
The wellbeing questionnaire
This is a lifestyle questionnaire, designed to tell you what your present position is. Once you’ve completed it, you can see a number of metrics on screen, and you can download PDF report which contains simple advice based on your answers. The expectation is that you will use this advice to make simple, targeted changes to decrease your risks and improve your quality of life.
You can track your progress by completing the questionnaire again and comparing the result.
The Take 5 Library
This is a collection of videos, podcasts and PDF downloads giving expert advice on all sorts of lifestyle issues. They’re arranged into categories so you can easily find what you’re looking for, and they cover a wide range of subjects, including nutrition, activity, back care, mental health, finances and work.
Fitness and wellbeing
Once you have a clear idea of where you are, and where you want to get to, it’s time to check out the Fitness and Wellbeing service. Before you get to the homepage, you’ll be asked to choose whether you’re looking for gym discounts or fitness and wellbeing advice. The gym discounts option takes you to a post code search so you can find participating gyms in your area. There are now over 3000 all over the UK, so there’s a good chance of finding a deal that suits you.
The Fitness and Wellbeing advice hub is split into four sections; Move, Munch, Money and Mind, with recent highlights picked out below the menu.
Move
In the Move section you’ll find a wide selection of free to stream exercise videos, organised by goal and individually labelled for duration and intensity, so you can choose a video to match your level of fitness, and how much time you have. There are sections for Strength & Toning, Cardio & HIIT and Yoga, Barre & Stretching. They range from 10 minutes to a little over half an hour.
Munch
The Munch section contains literally thousands of healthy recipes, with step-by-step instructions and a full nutritional breakdown. They’re organised into sections such as “family favourites”, “low calorie meals” and “quick and easy recipes”, or you can browse under a specific regional cuisine.
Money
The money section leads with expert articles on a variety of financial topics. They’re organised into six sections: Budgeting and Spending, Credit and Borrowing, Family and Protection, Saving, investing and Retirement and Home, Car and travel. If you have a financial question, there’s a good chance an industry expert has written about it for us.
Beneath the articles you’ll find a section called Money Tools, which includes useful budget planners and calculators for mortgages, loans and pensions provided by the Money Advice service n
Mind
The mind section has a series of audio recordings designed for meditation, some to help you sleep, and “soundscapes” to help you tune out and relax.
Below the audio menu you will once again find a series of expert articles, this time covering mental health issues like stress management, good quality sleep and a healthy work-life balance.
Discount Outlet
Designed to help you make your money go further, with discounts and cashback on thousands of every-day products and services; you may never pay full price again.
Ways to save on regular spending
Reloadable cards are available for many retailers, including major supermarkets and high street chains. They’re very simple to use – you load money onto the card at a discount, and then use them like a gift card to spend in store. If you shop with the same retailer on a regular basis you can set up an auto-top up to make the process even more convenient. Simply set the amount you want to top up each week or month, and Fair Pay Companion takes care of the rest. The discounts available range from 4% to 10%, which adds up to significant savings over time.
The Easy Saver card makes this even simpler, allowing you to use a single discount card at more than 40 high street chains.
Saving at the last minute
Instant vouchers work in a similar way – you purchase the voucher at a discount, and then spend it either online or in store. You can make the purchase in a few clicks, and spend your voucher straight away, so it’s well worth checking your Companion portal for savings. Vouchers are available for a wide range of retailers at between 4% and 10% discount.
Online shopping
Whenever you make any kind of purchase online, including insurance, breakdown cover, holiday bookings, energy suppliers and literally thousands of other products and services, look up the retailer in the Discount Outlet first. With thousands of discounts and cashback offers available, you may never pay full price for anything again.
If you have questions or if we can help in any way, please call our expert team on 01604 360222 or email registerme@fairpayservices.co.uk.