“Work smarter not harder” Allen F. Morgenstern
What is the purpose of Share Plans?
Share Incentive Plans drive employee performance and keep employee and business goals aligned. They allow businesses to retain and reward valuable employees, but sometimes they can be overwhelmingly complicated. Even the term ”share plan” sounds complex, let alone the application or management thereof. But it doesn’t have to be. Find out how to simply processes to reap the benefits for both participants and incentive managers.
Why do Share Plans need to be simplified for participants?
A common problem with share plans is that their value is conveyed in a way that makes little sense to the people who participate in them. These plans often have a large variety of performance conditions, and participants don’t fully understand how to maximise their plan’s rewards. If the employees participating in the share plan find it too complicated or lack an understanding of the plan, it’s likely they won’t be incentivised by it, and the plan will lose its efficacy.
Furthermore, long and tedious signup, acceptance, and paper-based exercise processes have been found to dissuade employees from wanting to participate.
It is crucial to find the right balance between simple and effective. An over-simplified award that does not embrace the correct terms and conditions will fail to meet its objectives of motivating employees and satisfying stakeholders. To achieve this balance, companies need to digitise share incentive management. Digitisation clarifies plan communication and simplifies processes, ensuring participants understand expectations. Moreover, employees can view and track their incentives in a user-friendly format. This creates an intuitive and interactive participant experience.
The benefits of simplified share plans for participants:
- They remain engaged throughout the plan’s lifetime.
- There is less chance of confusion and miscommunication.
- They can easily track their performance.
- They avoid tedious processes.
Why do Share Plans need to be simplified for incentive scheme and reward managers?
Administering share schemes consists of many intricate processes, from issuing awards and maintaining participant data to performing fair value calculations and preparing audit-ready reporting.
Like any complex task, administering share plans can take large amounts of valuable resources away from where they are really needed. The demanding complexities of this process can derail an entire team of rewards or finance professionals.
Even if we assume that share scheme tasks don’t take away valuable time from other essential duties, it would still be unrealistic to believe that people don’t make mistakes. The truth is, the more complicated and manual a share plan process becomes, the more susceptible it is to human error.
The benefits of simplified share plan tasks for incentive managers:
- More valuable resources become available as managing share plans consumes less time.
- It is easier to track tasks and duties involved in managing share plans.
- There is less risk of potential errors.
Read “How private companies can manage share incentive plans“
How do you circumvent complexities and clean up your processes?
Share plans do not necessarily need to be simple, but the management processes and how employees view them, should be. The fear of administration complexities shouldn’t influence the design of incentive schemes.
For processes as specialised as share plan administration, a fully comprehensive platform is needed to save time and, in many cases, resources. By partnering with the correct providers, you can facilitate data-driven decisions, ease work overload, and remove administration inefficiencies.
The ultimate specialised technology solution automates the management of share plans, from setting up a grant and allocating awards to automating the vesting and award issue process. It also incorporates all financial tasks such as fair value calculations and accounting reports without bothering your finance and accounting team.
How ShareForce Helps
ShareForce’s platform provides a specialised technology solution that helps to simplify and streamline share incentive scheme administration and management processes. ShareForce provides companies with the opportunity to enhance their participant experience to ensure that their share incentive schemes keep employees motivated and engaged!
To view a demo of the ShareForce Incentive Plan management tool, fill in the form below or visit www.shareforce.net/contact
