Since 2015 JLL, in partnership with WEALTH at work, rolled out a voluntary programme of financial education for its employees to help them with their maturing share schemes.
The financial education programme was designed specifically to help its employees understand their share scheme maturity options, the potential tax implications of these options and what to do next.
Sarah Ruggles, Head of Pensions and Benefits at JLL, comments: “We have been running Share Save schemes for a number of years and over the last few years our employees have enjoyed some extremely successful maturities. We therefore felt it was important to ensure that employees understood the choices available to them so they could achieve the best possible financial outcomes for their circumstances.
"We ran a number of our own financial education sessions but we realised these were relatively expensive for us to host and we were not gaining the engagement we wanted from our employees, which is why we decided to change our approach.
"We researched a number of providers to deliver financial education and chose to appoint WEALTH at work to help us with the education of our employees.
"We chose WEALTH at work because they had worked successfully with a number of other organisations and they were able to provide some innovative solutions to help engage employees and communicate the key messages.
"The financial education programme included webinars delivered by WEALTH at work, accompanied by an engaging animation and direct email invitations. This resulted in excellent employee take-up, with 50 per cent of those employees participating in the maturing Share Save attending a webinar.
"Feedback from employees who attended a webinar was very positive and we were very pleased with the take-up and level of employee engagement.
"We believe this was a very valuable initiative for our employees and we will be looking to repeat the exercise for future Share Save maturities.”
Jonathan Watts-Lay, Director at WEALTH at work, comments: “Financial support is a must given the enormity of the decisions that employees face when it comes to share schemes maturing – it’s great that JLL are working with us to support their employees with this.”
He continues: “I believe financial education is an important step in developing an employee’s knowledge to help them understand their personal financial situation. We work with many employees to help them to consider how to hold their investments in a manner which is not only tax efficient but can help avoid taking more risk than they may wish to.”
