Global chemicals business Innospec, which operates in 17 countries, including the US, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Hungary, offers a sharesave scheme to all eligible staff.
The Global All Employee Sharesave Plan, administered by Yorkshire Building Society, was rolled out in 2010 and is designed to take account of different legislation and tax structures around the world.
Not all participating employees can take advantage of tax efficiencies on savings, but that was never the scheme’s main objective. Cathy Hessner, senior vice-president of HR, says: “We wanted to allow people to save and to make it tax-efficient if it was feasible, but that depends on the number of employees.
It has been able to do this in countries such as the US and Germany where it has a larger workforce. But Hessner adds: “In France, we have only 30 members of staff, so implementing tax-efficiency was not cost-effective.
However, French employees who joined the scheme will still benefit from an increase in the value of the shares and the opportunity to take something at the end of three years or continue saving.
“As a global company, it is very important we engage all our staff across the world and with this project we have been able to achieve this."
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