Field sales teams are hard to reach. They work alone, scattered across the country, sometimes going a whole day with no contact beyond a check-in call. Building culture in that environment isn't just difficult - it's easy to write off as not worth trying.
But Octopus Energy didn't write it off.
Their Head of Engagement, Emily Hall, has used Huggg since the day she joined. At first, to look after around 100 field sales reps. Now she's responsible for 3,000 people. And Huggg is still at her side.
The customer
Octopus Energy has a glowing reputation. It's won the Which? Recommended Provider award eight times. It repeatedly lands on the Sunday Times Best Places to Work list. And it's somehow made a typically transactional sector feel genuinely human.
That's no accident. It's the result of a deliberate, ongoing commitment to making people feel connected - whether they're in an office or driving between jobs on their own.
"If you look after your team members and they feel that connection, they feel part of the change - they're going to stay, they're going to perform, and they're going to find their home." - Emily Hall, Octopus Energy
The challenge: building belonging without being in the room
Field sales teams have a reputation for high turnover and a transactional relationship with their employers. The nature of the work - solo, commission-linked, physically remote from the rest of the company - makes it easy for people to feel like they're on their own.
Emily recognised this when she joined. The challenge wasn't just getting people to perform. It was getting them to feel like they actually belonged somewhere worth belonging to. And as her remit grew to include Octopus's fast-growing Low Carbon Tech division - solar panels, heat pumps, EV chargers, a team where 80% of people had been in role for less than six months - the stakes got higher.
"You can go a whole day only speaking to your boss if you call them. You're alone. What we want to stop is people feeling isolated - and Huggg is one of the main ways we do that." - Emily Hall, Octopus Energy
The solution: a link, a message, 90 seconds
Huggg sits inside Octopus's Slack. No separate platform to log into, no addresses to collect, no supplier to manage. Emily drops a link, adds a message, done.
It needs to be that easy when you're looking after dispersed teams at scale. But what keeps Emily coming back isn't just the speed of sending - it's what recipients actually do with it. A curated choice of gifts - brownies, a Lumie lamp, a pamper hamper, you name it - makes a moment in a way cash can't.
"If I just handed someone £30 right now, realistically they'd spend it on something they need but don't want - groceries, a household bill. But with a curated list of gifts, they get the thing they actually want. We get people sending in photos of what they got. It creates a memory, not just a transaction." - Emily Hall, Octopus Energy
Their programme: every occasion, every team
Emily and her team use Huggg across a wide range of moments, and she's deliberate about keeping it fresh.
- Day-to-day moments. "It's freezing out - grab a coffee, grab a Greggs sausage roll." For the field team especially, that kind of gesture lands because it shows someone's thinking about the reality of their day.
- MVP of the month. Each team recognises a standout, called out in regular meetings by senior leaders or peers, and rewarded with a gift of choice. The choice piece matters: it's the difference between something people want and something they'll use out of obligation.
- Seasonal campaigns. A gym-motivation Slack channel in January drew 500 members and offered 12 prizes. An advent calendar with a daily Huggg QR code made Christmas gifting manageable across the whole organisation. A deck-of-cards incentive let people cash out prizes or gamble on the Wheel of Fortune for more - simple, fun, and tied directly to behaviour she wanted to encourage.
"Gifting takes about 90 seconds - and that's mostly me taking time over the message. It's important to link a gift to a message, it needs to tell a story. But the platform itself? Genuinely that quick." - Emily Hall, Octopus Energy
The results: scores that speak for themselves
Emily doesn't just talk about culture - she measures it. Octopus uses an internal tool called Office Vibe for regular employee sentiment checks. Her field teams score the highest across the entire company.
The complaints data tells a similar story. Before Octopus built out its own field team culture, agency workers generated high complaint volumes. Now they get a handful a month - and when Emily investigates, most come back to pricing or wider market issues, not the team.
The commercial case holds up too. Happy people take more time with customers, customers invest back, and the whole thing compounds. The Which? track record and Sunday Times ranking are the macro-level proof. Office Vibe and complaints data are the day-to-day version.
"You create a safe space for great customer interactions, people take a bit more time and invest in the customer, and that customer invests back in you. It's totally worth it from an ROI perspective." - Emily Hall, Octopus Energy
The takeaway
Octopus Energy isn't doing anything structurally complicated. No points systems, no complex tiering, no reward portals that need a login and a password reset. What they're doing is consistent, thoughtful, and just simple.
For dispersed teams especially, that's the key:
- Show up in the small moments - a cold day, a difficult week, a gym session
- Give people genuine choice, so recognition feels personal, not transactional
- Make it quick enough that you actually do it, even in the middle of a busy day
The result: a field team culture that can't be matched, and a People team making sure it stays that way.
"If you've got a field team - people you're not seeing every single day - just do it. Don't hesitate. Every team I've taken on, Huggg has come with me." - Emily Hall, Octopus Energy
Want to make recognition feel like this for your team? See how Huggg works - it's free to use, and you only pay for the gifts you send.
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