GEO INSIGHTS

The ‘millennial mindset’ is now a phrase familiar to HR professionals. It means a way of thinking that builds social consciousness into all aspects of life.

As younger generations of employees pay attention to where businesses spend their money and how they contribute to society, establishing a corporate culture of social awareness and offering philanthropic benefits can attract and retain top talent, instil a sense of purpose and improve employee engagement.

In 2020, Generali designed a unique all-employee share plan that empowers its people to drive social change.

Simple to understand and pioneering in structure, We SHARE - The Generali Ownership Plan encourages their 70,000 global employees to help care for those most vulnerable in society.

Let’s take a look at Generali’s socially aware approach to share ownership.

“If your company is looking to recruit and retain the best talent it may be time to look past traditional perks such as gym memberships and swanky offices and use your share plan to offer a rewarding, engaging and meaningful employee experience.”

1. Put people at the heart of your corporate strategy

At Generali, entrepreneurship and growth are encouraged, and their teams are empowered to make a difference to people’s lives through the work that they do.

These employee-centric and altruistic principles became a key focus when Generali launched its strategic plan in 2020.

The company strived to ensure alignment of employee performance with their new strategic goals by prioritizing their employees’ needs.

2. Create a common purpose

Generali wanted its We SHARE plan to be capable of reaching out and bringing together people with a common purpose from across the globe for the common good.

To provide a structure and focus for their corporate giving, Generali established ‘The Human Safety Net Foundation’, a charity that aims to help shape a safer future and make a concrete and lasting impact on lives.

3. Incentivize plan participation

A donation of the equivalent monetary value of one share for each employee who actively participated in the company’s share purchase plan was paid by Generali to its ‘The Human Safety Net’ charitable foundation. Employees were also encouraged to make additional voluntary donations to feel personally invested.

Other engagement incentives included free shares, potential share price gains, and membership of ‘The Owners’ Club’, an app offering on-demand financial education and support.

4. Develop a multi-channel communications system

Generali’s well-orchestrated communications campaign was lauded by our judges as one of the most integrated and comprehensive programs they had encountered. The plan had visible top-down support, strong program branding, and its comprehensive communications materials were visible, clear, country-specific, and accessible.

5. Prioritize more comprehensive financial education

Generali provided participants with digital tools to make informed financial decisions via their Owners Club app. This award-winning financial education program provides direct, virtual, on-demand, and borderless access for plan participants all year round.

Financial concepts are made easily understood and its content leverages expert opinion from qualified internal and external sources with themes that dovetail into the benefits of equity and link to the corporate charity.

The result? A successful share plan that fuels positive change

Not only is the We SHARE plan an innovative share ownership program that fits snugly with the company’s ethos, but it also enjoyed a plan participation rate of 35.7% during its three-week enrolment window and won the following GEO Awards:

• 2020 Best Plan Communication
• 2021 Best Use of a Share Plan in Support of Corporate Social Responsibility
• 2021 Best in Financial Education

Today, the Human Safety Net charity is funded by donations from the We SHARE plan, General’s employees, its Vitality membership base, members of the public, and social investors. It works to transform the lives of over 150,000 vulnerable parents, children, and refugees across 23 countries, most recently raising funds to support impacted families with children from Ukraine. Visit the Safety Net website to find out more.

Recent changes to the Employee Share Scheme (ESS) regulations in Australia have clarified tax obligations for employees and eased obligations for employers, allowing tech start-ups to attract top talent in the global market. The introduction of a new ESS regime replaces previous relief measures, making it simpler for companies to obtain relief and avoid complex disclosures and regulatory obligations. Biztech Lawyers and Qapita are supporting clients in Australia and internationally to leverage these changes and empower their employees through equity ownership.

The concept of intuition — simply knowing when something is right or wrong, is often romanticized but, while it can provide a hunch or spark that starts you down a particular path, it's through data that we verify, understand, and quantify.

Data-driven decision-making (or DDDM) bases decisions on the insights and analysis of verified data. Here, we look at how GEO Award winners have used data to shape the design, direction, and implementation of their share plans.

1. Improving participant engagement

Stock plan teams can use the information gleaned from data analytics to improve employee engagement strategies. A great example of this in action is easyJet, an award winner that used plan data to identify groups of disengaged employees and designed a bespoke and targeted communications campaign to successfully drive engagement in these groups. Similarly, Google created a mobility tool to identify and target participants with specific plan messaging.

Award-winning companies that helped participants make key decisions using data include Alcon, which created 2,300 personalized statements with before and after spin values to provide transparency to participants and Unilever, which designed personalized videos for its vesting employees that featured their personal share plan data.

2. Measuring plan success

Data analysis can be an ally when it comes to tracking the success of an employee share plan.

Implementing a very clear scoring system to track their executive plan’s performance criteria enabled IHS Markit to measure and prove its effectiveness. Comparably, Google used numerous data points to measure the success of its plan including training scores, ticket metrics, broker and vendor data, and employee feedback.

3. Informing plan design

Stock plan designs can be enriched by data captured through user experience research methods such as surveys, feedback forums or analysis of previous design iterations.

When designing a new all-employee plan that delivered the full value of shares rather than just the growth in share price via EBITDA-linked performance criteria, Kindred Group used feedback and learnings from survey data and its previous plans, that improved the plan’s engagement rate by 26% year-on-year.

Uber also effectively used evaluation metrics and survey data to refine its education materials and delivery methods to meet the financial education needs of its highly diverse, global employees.

4. Develop a multi-channel communications system

Creating a one-stop, single data source makes sure that business decisions are being made based on common data.

GEO award-winner Walmart collated its historical data in its new reward system to provide a full and holistic view of its equity program history of 410m shares over 40 years., Anglo American Kumba Iron Ore’s cloud-based portal was designed around a single data source and offers an end-to-end solution for its administration, accounting, and reporting teams.

5. Improving executive reporting

Driven by the need for leadership teams to validate the financial investment in its equity plans, stock plan teams track a wide array of information including vesting schedules, plan parameters, grant prices, participant details, and award expiration dates—but it takes time, resource, and expertise to produce high-level reports that determine whether the programs are working as intended.

To this end, Amazon created an end-to-end technology stack to communicate its data findings and recommendations to the executive team via automated monthly business reports, saving hundreds of hours and freeing up stock team’s resources in the process.

Using data to improve your company’s equity plans doesn’t have to be a painful task. Our award winners have shown that data is indeed king if you use it to capture, interpret, extract and present important information. It can bring strategic perspective and wide-ranging tangible, measurable benefits to your plan, participants, internal teams and leadership.