EXCLUSIVE: Since 2018, there has been little change when it comes to the proportion of respondents that offer shares or share options to staff, according to research by Employee Benefits.
The Benefits research 2019, which canvassed the views of 290 HR professionals and was published in May 2019, found that 25% provide shares or share options for all staff, compared with 22% that did so last year, while 12% offer them only to senior or executive staff, decreasing slightly from 15% in 2018.
The majority of employers (60%) still do not offer shares or share options to their employees, and only 3% plan to in the future. This is only a small decrease from the 64% that did not offer shares to employees in 2018, and is an increase overall since 2017, when this number stood at 54%.
Among those that do provide shares for their employees, the largest proportion (43%) provide long-term incentive plans (L-tips), in which the employee is required to fulfil various conditions or requirements, contributing to increasing shareholder value.
While the L-tip has been the most popular type of scheme for a number of years, it is notable that this has dropped by 15 percentage points since last year. This might suggest a move away from widespread use of L-tips, were it not for the considerable gap between this and the next most commonly used option, which is the all-employee sharesave or save-as-you-earn scheme (20%).
Indeed, use of this savings-related share scheme, through which employees can save up to £500 a month, with the option of using the money to buy shares at the end of the savings contract, has in fact dropped by seven percentage points since 2018.
Click to download Employee Benefits' Benefits research 2019
