Employee Incentives
Employee share schemes & incentive arrangements are an effective and tax advantageous way to retain and motivate highly skilled employees. Our lawyers have a wealth of experience in establishing these schemes, so can ensure that your scheme is appropriately tailored to the needs of your business, benefitting both business and employee alike.
Employee share schemes & incentive arrangements are an effective and tax advantageous way to retain and motivate highly skilled employees. Our lawyers have a wealth of experience in establishing these schemes, so can ensure that your scheme is appropriately tailored to the needs of your business, benefitting both business and employee alike.
Employee share schemes and incentive arrangements have become more popular in recent years for a very good reason. When implemented correctly, they are a reliable source of motivation to a business’ workforce, while allowing a business to reward high performance in a tax advantageous manner.
Leathes Prior has been involved in establishing a large number of employee share and incentive schemes, each with their own unique objectives and characteristics. As such, we are well placed to help you develop a scheme which properly captures your intentions and maximises impact on your employees moving forward.
Our significant expertise in this area also allows us to provide educational and advisory services to your employees before your scheme is implemented. In order to have the greatest effect on morale, it is essential that your employees understand how your scheme can work for them, so explaining the function of your scheme in a clear and concise manner is a cornerstone of our service.
Why introduce an incentive / share scheme?
Typically, our clients have cited the following reasons as to why introducing an employee share or incentive scheme has been beneficial to their business and their workforce:
To incentivise employees
By offering employees the opportunity to acquire company shares, you effectively give your employees some ‘skin in the game’. Where they stand to gain personally by growing your business, they are far more likely to contribute more towards it.
To retain talent
Offering shares to your employees says that you would like them around for the long term, and accepting that offer is in itself a long term commitment. The payoff for involvement in a scheme for employees comes down the road, so in opting to participate, your employees are making a statement of long-term commitment to your business.
To improve employee morale
Valued employees are happy employees, and inviting an employee to join you in part-ownership of the business is as large a statement of value as they come. Share schemes can be tailored so as to impart as much of that value as possible, without relinquishing an inappropriate level of control.
Succession planning
There is more to preparing yourself for an exit than finding the right buyer and building your business’ valuation. A saleable business is one that can operate efficiently without you, and so a share scheme can be an excellent way to build and incentivise a management team to take on that responsibility. If you think employee incentives / share schemes could be an option for your business, please feel free to get in touch with our team for more information.
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