EXCLUSIVE: Ocado has launched a share incentive plan (Sip) for employees.
The scheme, which was launched in July, has two elements. The first is a buy-as-you-earn scheme, which awards staff with one matching share for every seven partnership shares they purchase.
Joanna Gordon-Utting, reward and benefits manager at Ocado, said: “We had a good take up in the first month; just over 7% of eligible employees.”
The second element of the Sip is free annual shares. All eligible employees will receive 1% of their base salary in free shares every September, beginning in September 2014.
Employees become eligible for the buy-as-you-earn scheme once they have completed three months’ service, while eligibility for the free shares is six months’ service on the day of issue.
Gordon-Utting added: “There is a lot of excitement about the free shares.”
Ocado has offered staff a sharesave scheme since 2010, but this is its first Sip. As a result, it had an intensive communications exercise to undertake.
“We had to go out and explain what buy-as-you-earn is, what partnership shares and matching shares are, and then talk about the free shares to all the populations we have,” said Gordon-Utting.
It hosted benefits roadshows with its provider YBS, which spoke at each Ocado site about the free shares and the buy-as-you-earn scheme.
Gordon-Utting added: “We’ve used texts to communicate with our drivers. We’ve also done email messages and an information pack that went to all eligible employees’ home addresses.”
