Programme

Morning Planery: The Great Resignation and the Future of Work

Widespread re-evaluation of employee priorities has led to resignations and contributed to significant labour shortages. This panel of industry experts will discuss:

• What’s currently happening? Is there still a  'Great Resignation'? Is it slowing?
• Impact on shares for employees
• What are companies  doing to retain and attract employees
• Impact of inflation on salaries and benefits
• What role employee benefits and ‘financial wellbeing’ have at this time

Panellists:
Janet Cooper OBE - Acting Chair, RNLI and ProShare Advisory Panel
Yvonne Smyth - UK&I HR and Legal Engagement Director, Hays,
Rosemary Lemon - Group Head of Reward, Hays
Roger Fairhead - Group Reward Director, Legal & General

The board, investors and employees are asking what is being done for the wider workforce, financial resilience and social responsibilities. Now is the time to raise employee share ownership as part of company strategy for social responsibility and supporting the wider workforce.

People and planet are now as important as profit – and employee share ownership is one way for firms to embrace their social responsibilities.

Panellists:
Katie Crisp - Director, Deloitte LLP
Lucy Hovland - Director - Deloitte LLP
Leanne Scimia - Group Reward Manager, RS Group plc
Siobhan Spiro - VP, Group Reward, RS Group plc

What Do Issuers Want? The Perfect All-Employee Plan

We asked 100 issuers about the perfect all-employee share plan and this session talks through our findings. Expect fun and engaging audience interaction with a Family Fortunes style format. We show the top answers, allowing for challenges from our panellists representing the FTSE, AIM and global markets and the audience. Come along and enjoy the search to find the next big thing in all-employee share plan!

Panellists: 
Darren Smith, Business Development Director, Global Shares
Jules Shepherd  Director, Share Plans, Reward & Recognition, Sage Group plc
John Rowland-Jones ACIS, Corporate Services Director,  Bally’s Corporation
Robin Miller, General Counsel & Company Secretary, Travis Perkins plc

So, You Want to Win a ProShare Award?

This year’s ProShare annual awards are extra special as they mark our 30th birthday! If you are considering making an award submission, be sure to attend this masterclass session where Jeremy Mindell - chair of the ProShare Awards Judging Panel - will talk you through exactly what you need to do to give yourself the very best chance of success. Jeremy has reviewed more than 500 ProShare award submissions over the past 8 years, so if anyone knows what it takes to win one of these coveted awards, it’s him!

Jeremey Mindell - Director, Primondell Ltd

Transforming bp

On the 11th of March 2021, bp made the largest single grant of equity in its history. This was the first phase of a grant to every single employee working for bp and had been in planning ever since bp’s new Chief Executive had announced their new strategy to the world, the previous year.

Jo Mitchell talks to bp’s Cat Rylah on how the share plan team accepted their biggest ever challenge and used share plans to engage employees in the bp transformation journey.

Speakers:
Cat Rylah - Senior Equity Analyst, bp
Joanne Mitchell - Senior Client Manager, Computershare

Rule the school: building financial education into communications that grab employee attention

This unique case study, presented by education publishing company Pearson PLC and Deloitte employee communications specialists Stitch, tells the story of their successful collaboration to reinvigorate Pearson’s save for shares plan. It offers advice, ideas, and refreshingly real-life examples, outlining how you can use effective comms to engage, inform, and create value for your employees.

Panellists:
Wade Gravett - Share Plans Manager, Pearson PLC
Caroline Dillon - Account Manager, Stitch - a Deloitte business

Women and Money - different approaches to investing

Planning for the future is more important than ever. With COVID-19 just behind us, increasing cost of living, inflation, and global uncertainties - helping employees understand and maximise their investment opportunities is crucial. We’ll be sharing insights on the gender gap in investing, the reasons behind it and what can be done to address it for women in share plans and wider financial wellness.

Sophie Altaf - European Industry Relations & Marketing Lead, Fidelity
Emma-Lou Montgomery - Associate Director, Personal Investing, Fidelity

Afternoon Plenary: 

Bunfight at the OK Corral!

Listen to some quick-fire debating on questions companies face in these challenging times and vote for your favourite. Forget the theory; this is the real world! We’re debating: Should we offer tax-favoured plans where possible? Is it important that employees become shareholders? Which is better - a savings plan or a purchase plan? If you had a magic wand what one thing would you change?

Kristy Foster - Head of Equity Operations, bp
Pat Sims - Global Share Plan Consultant, PJS Consultancy
Anna Watch - Senior Manager, Corporate Governance, BT

Let’s look beyond share plan take-up: Financial Education is key to long-term success

Financial education empowers employees to make the right decision, including deciding if share plans should be part of the mix. It's about more than just take-up. Listening to employees and supporting their financial wellbeing leads to better long-term results. Join us to look at how Kingfisher helps its people make more confident decisions throughout the entire share plan lifecycle.

Chrissie Davis - Founder, MD, and Fellow Chartered Secretary, Eximia
Mike Emmett, Interim Share Plans Manager, Kingfisher plc

Supporting Sustainability: how can share plans help to protect a company's long-term interests?

Sustainability is fundamental to a company's long-term success and, more than ever, a focus of business leaders. Incentives and Employment specialists from DLA Piper will consider potential share plan features that can protect a company's long-term interests – from adding weight to restrictive covenants to the use of overriding discretions, which can help to change employees' behaviours and promote the ‘right kind’ of success.  

Jan Colhoun - Senior Associate, DLA Piper
Martin Macleod - Legal Director, DLA Piper

Ireland: Where are we now on share plans?

A whistlestop tour of incentive plans in Ireland including some commentary / experiences on the current landscape. This will include tax advantaged schemes suitable for public companies, e.g. SAYE/APSS and an outline of other popular share arrangements for public and private companies. We will also cover Ireland in an international context and any key points regarding international share plans.

Marie Flynn - Private Client Director and Head of Management Incentivisation, PwC Ireland and Irish ProShare Association
Eleanor Cunningham - Partner at McCann FitzGerald LLP

Is Sharesave Just for Saving?
A look at academic literature and industry research.

A review of the leading academic literature and industry research to help answer the question of whether Sharesave provides shareholders or is just a savings vehicle. From why employees join the plan in the first place to those all-important decisions at maturity. Most of us do not have the time to trawl through the academic literature; let us do that for you.

Panellists:
Helen Hopkins - Client Technical Director, Share Plans, Link Group
Tristan Adams - Account Director, Link Group

Mind the gap! Closing the gap between participants’ perceived value and actual value of your performance plans

Participants often have a hard time understanding share plans; when you then add a performance rule, you lose the rest. And if the participant doesn’t understand their plans, they don’t appreciate their value, and then you lose retention. With the massive investments that go into the design and running these plans, ensure you are hitting the sweet spot of understanding and buy-in.

Panellists:
Christian Hyldig - EMEA Equity Services Director, AON
Marina Gostanian - Senior Consultant Equity Services, AON

Connectivity Through Employee Ownership

How can a company stay connected to its employees when the world can be so physically disconnected? How can companies support employees through significant moments of change? Join this experienced panel from Aviva, Schroders and Tapestry to hear two case studies on the delivery of one-off ‘thank you’ free shares to employees globally, showcasing the real power of employee share plans, especially through difficult times.

Panellists:
Matthew Hunter - Managing Associate, Tapestry Compliance
Sonia Jenkins - Global Head of Reward and Wellbeing, Schroders
Karen Morley - Share Scheme Co-Ordinator, Aviva
Sally Blanchflower - Senior Associate, Tapestry Compliance

How Do You Share Success With the Gig Economy?

Estimates suggest gig workers account for 25% of the UK workforce. Current legislation makes it difficult for employers to provide them with the share plans and reward available to ‘regular’ employees. But cast an eye across the pond and there’s cause for hope. In this session, we explore how well we understand this growing new workforce and what we could do to better support them.

Panellists:
Martha Parkhurst - Strategic Communications Manager, Eximia
Suzannah Crookes - Legal Director, Tapestry Compliance
Ian Bird - Practice Director, Secondsight

Incentivising and Integrating ESG - practical guidance for incorporating ESG into employee incentives and equity compensation

With ESG a top priority in boardrooms across the country, our panel will look at five key components for integrating ESG considerations and performance metrics into your stock plans and incentive arrangements:

• Practical challenges facing HR teams
• Deciding if an ESG incentive is right for you
• Getting buy-in from executive teams
• Structuring ESG metrics, measuring performance and adjusting for risk
• Driving accountability with all stakeholders

Mission Success - Launching a New Global Plan, CCEP’s Journey

Join us as we delve into the ins and outs of CCEP’s Global ESPP launch. We’ll explore the challenges faced, from communicating the new plan to managing participants from an acquired company, closing down plans already in existence, multiple languages and some countries not even having internet access. Despite these, CCEP still came out on top with great employee engagement and an excellent participation rate.

Rob Reynolds - Director Executive Rewards, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP)
Lauren Brown - Head of Secretariat, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP)
Simon Stafford - Senior Relationship Manager, Morgan Stanley at Work
Emma Parker - Senior Associate, Tapestry Compliance

Employee share plans: building financial resilience for plan participants

• An engaging and interactive session on how integrating workplace financial wellbeing programmes can improve the financial resilience of the workforce.
• How to tackle key topics including the cost of living crisis, engagement with share plans and savings, managing debt and general money matters.
• Concluding with practical steps of how to integrate financial wellbeing programmes that include financial education on the outlined topics to support the pillars of ‘Wellbeing’

Sarah Long - Head of New Business, Wealth at Work

Is it possible to reach everyone when communicating about you employee share plan?

In the current cost of living crisis, communicating about employee share plans to your workforce has never been more important. Join David & Jack as they discuss the wider challenges facing businesses when communicating to their employees. In this session we will discuss strategy, tactics and how to overcome complexity when communicating your share plan.

Jack Price - Managing Director, UK Communication Services, Computershare
David Parry – Communications Director, Computershare

Malus and Clawback in Practice - case studies and lessons learnt

Malus and clawback provisions grant companies a mechanism to withhold or recover remuneration awarded to an employee in specific circumstances and are a requirement for listed companies under the 2018 UK Corporate Governance Code.  This presentation debates how enforceable and effective they are in practice, as well as suggesting potential solutions to assist companies with these obligations.

David Baxter - Director, Incentives, Clifford Chance
Rebecca Avery - Trust Manager, ZEDRA
Matt Longson - Trust Manager, ZEDRA

SAYE - 42 years young 

SAYE is the longest running and most popular (by take-up) of HMRC's tax-advantaged share plans. Issuers are interested in market trends, current and future impacts and tips for managing plans successfully, including those where there are significant maturity gains. The panel will provide stimulating discussion into these topics, covering how relevant SAYE is today and what SAYE nirvana could look like.

Panellists:
Ian Cox - Managing Director, Head of Share Plan Services, EQ
Hannah Needle, FGE - Board Member and Legal Director, Tapestry Compliance
Jennifer Rudman - Industry Director, Employee Share Plans, Equiniti
Puneet Singh - Head of Executive Pay and Interim Head of UK Reward, National Grid

Share plans in a falling market - how to maintain take-up and engagement

There's no such thing as a falling market - only a market that has fallen. Nobody has any idea whether the market will rise or fall over the next three/five years - though history suggests it's more likely to rise. This session will explain how we think share plan issuers can reassure employees about equity market volatility. We'll also explain how both major UK share plans have key features which make them ideal for volatile conditions, and how to make sure this message lands with employees.

We'll look at segmenting your employee base into engaged and unengaged cohorts, the way we talk about volatility and how share plans can mitigate it, to suit different audiences. Finally, we’ll talk about workplace financial education and how it can help improve employees’ financial resilience in tougher economic times.

Panellists:
Tom Gwinnell – Client Director, RewardPointZero
Ben Brettell – Director, RewardPointZero

Employee engagement - how do share plans fit in?

EY will discuss the latest thinking on employee engagement and the employee value proposition. Drawing on research into what drives employee engagement, EY will explore its different facets and how effective use of employee equity plans supports engagement. We will also discuss key features of impactful employee incentives and how to review whether your plans and communications are aligned with your broader employee engagement messaging.

Speaker:
Alex Murdoch, Partner, EY

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