Strategic and tailored employee share schemes to support growth and retention
Owner-managers, founders and CFOs are increasingly seeing employee share schemes as an effective long-term incentivisation for staff. Employee share schemes encourage current employees to contribute to the growth of the business and stay long term while being attractive to new talent.
Share schemes are not only a valuable benefit for your people but also align employee rewards with returns to your shareholders without a cash flow impact on your business.
Employee share scheme offering
Correctly structuring your employee share scheme is crucial for optimising the tax-advantaged status. Every business is different, so we tailor the scheme to your economic and commercial objectives.
Our integrated service ensures that you choose the scheme that is the best fit for your business and people. You can rely on us to set it up properly so that it fully complies with regulatory requirements.
We are experts in implementing the four statutory tax-advantaged share schemes, summarised below. We work across all sectors, calling on our sector-specialist colleagues in technology, finance, meditech and PE-backed businesses, to name but the most recent collaborations.
Enterprise management incentives (EMI)
A tax-advantaged share option scheme aimed at SMEs that have a qualifying trade and want to reward specific employees.
Company share option plan (CSOP)
A tax-advantaged share option scheme that can be used by larger companies, still with scope to tailor awards to individual participants.
Save as you earn (SAYE)
Also known as Sharesave – a tax-advantaged share option scheme that is combined with a savings product, it is an all-employee plan, usually offered to employees of quoted companies.
Share incentive plan (SIP)
An all-employee scheme aimed at quoted and larger private companies. SIP bundles different types of share awards into a tax-efficient scheme. The shares are acquired up-front and held by a trust for five years, when they can be sold free of tax.
Additionally, we have wide experience of growth shares, joint share ownership plans (JSOP) and other non-statutory share schemes. Our wider team can advise on share valuation and employee reward as well as helping benchmark your packages against the market.
Help from the experts
An employee share scheme is an effective way to boost your people rewards package. It is a complex field with several alternative routes, so taking the wrong path could result in considerable lost tax advantages.
If you are considering introducing an employee share scheme, contact our share scheme expert Thomas Dalby to discuss the best choice for your business.
