Reem Ikram

A great way for companies to align with employee objectives when offering Stock options is to give them choices. More and more companies these days offer employees a choice of how much equity or how much cash reward they prefer. Usually, there are caps and minimum amounts controlled by the company, but still, the flexibility is there. Often what I see is that employees start with selecting about a 50/50 composition but ultimately see the greater value in the share plan and end up with about an 80/20 breakdown. This will vary by industry and company though. Also to keep in mind is the burden this adds to the administration, ideally, these selections should be automated through some technology or software...

When designing a benefits plan for employees, the first step is to understand the organization and the strategy. For example, if we are at a company whose philosophy is performance-oriented, a bigger focus may be on building competitive performance rewards. If we are at a company looking to build a "best place to work" we may prioritise perks, vacation times and flexible work. If we are at a company that is growing and we are looking for believers to help us reach the stars, we may create more long-term, equity-based benefits. The idea is to create internal marketing to align the company's and the employee's goals. This will determine who we hire and who we succeed in retaining.

It's hard to pinpoint one most effective channel, in my experience, it should be a mix. Target employees on digital media: Internal marketing campaigns are designed to give employees little snippets about their benefits and why this is a perk. Educational workshops: offer seminars, webinars, or other interactive meetings that allow employees to ask questions and get answers and advice. Implement a transparent and easy-to-use technology: The easiest channel is word of mouth, but it is slow and needs consistency. If the benefits are streamlined on a platform to help employees navigate and receive clear communication on the go, this helps cross-promote other benefit programs and foster employee engagement.

At the end of the day, Technology is a tool and it will make it easier and more efficient to communicate benefits to employees as well as maintain and administrate benefit plans. A key factor when it comes to benefits like for example Share option plans, LTIPs etc, is that there is a huge margin of error that can occur, which costs organizations millions of dollars each year. By automating these processes it takes a big burden off the HR teams. However, it needs to be remembered in technology it will always be garbage in garbage out. So the only way for technology to be effective is to have the right policies and procedures in place (for the specific company...) and a team that understands the benefits and can operate the technology.

To be honest it really depends on the company and the type of objectives of the organization, while I do support employee representation we do need to balance the different stakeholders and very often the alignment with corporate objectives are restricted with information disclosures. So yes input should be collected, maybe surveys, satisfaction interviews feedback of the materials, resources and overall comments are great here but when it comes to representation in the NRC (nomination and remuneration committee) I do think employee participation will be restricted to the CEO and probably CHRO, who by all means should be having employee interests in mind when making decisions about bonus and rewards programs.

I found that an effective way to communicate or promote these plans is through technology and education. A big aspect of the success is the understanding of the program and unfortunately time is not in our favor here. Very often these plans can be complex with several different layers that need to be explained and communicated repeatedly. Having it handy on an app or having regular webinars conducted where employees can ask questions has been useful in my experience.