Case study: Punch Taverns
When Punch Taverns introduced a share incentive plan last June, it was wary that length of service issues could be divisive.With no minimum length of service, all employees could take up the buy-one-get-one-free deal, whether they had been there for a day or a decade.
Francis Patton, customer services director, says: "As soon as anybody joins the company, they have access to the scheme and can join immediately. It just seemed the right way to go about doing it."
Since then, over half the workforce have taken a stake in the pub chain. But length of service conditions "can cause problems, particularly in some new start-up companies where the share price does well very quickly," adds Patton.
