Amadeus IT Holdings, Royal Dutch Shell and Telefonica were among the winners at the 2015 Employee Share Ownership (Esop) Centre awards for best employee share ownership plans.
The awards recognise outstanding employee approaches to employee share ownership, including communication, staff engagement, and implementation of share ownership schemes, as well as workplace financial education.
Amadeus IT Holdings won the award for ‘Best international all-employee share plan in a company with more than 1,500 employees in at least three countries’. The employer achieved a 56% employee participation rate in its share incentive plan.
Its plan was designed primarily with Amadeus IT Holdings’ internal objectives in mind, followed by consideration of the tax implications for staff. According to the award judges, Amadeus IT Holdings made good use of word-of-mouth communication and employee testimony. It also achieved board level support for the plan and communicated this to its employees.
Royal Dutch Shell was awarded for its share plan communications because of the way in which it rejuvenated its communications and tied them into its corporate messages. The plan includes 37,000 employees across 50 countries.
Telefonica won the award for ‘Best use of video in share plan communications’. The judges praised the employer for its slick and professional video style, which featured support for the plan from the chief executive officer, chairman and directors.
The full list of winners is as follows:
- ‘Best international all-employee share plan in a company with more than 1,500 employees in at least three countries’: Amadeus IT Holdings.
- ‘Best all-employee share plan in a company with fewer than 1,500 employees’: Abzena.
- ‘Best all-employee share plan communications’: Royal Dutch Shell.
- ‘Best in financial education for employees’: Henderson Global Investors.
- ‘Best use of video in share plan communications’: Telefonica.
- ‘Best employee equity intervention by a major company chairman or CEO’: Sacha Romanovitch, CEO at Grant Thornton.
Romanovitch said: “My ambition is for all of our people to have a stake in Grant Thornton becoming the go-to firm for growth.
”The only way we can fully harness the potential of all 4,500 of our people is through shared enterprise, a sense that we are all in this together sharing our thinking and ideas, sharing the responsibility to drive the business forward and sharing in the resulting rewards.”