How Employee Portal can improve engagement in equity management?

Equity compensation is about recruiting, rewarding and retaining the best employees so that they are motivated to work towards your company’s goals. But if your employees have no visibility of their equity awards, are you maximising the power of what stock ownership can do for your company?

That’s why an employee portal comes into play.

So, here at Global Shares, we ensure that an engaging employee portal is well integrated into our equity management software, which is incredibly easy to use and highly customisable, while still being an industry-leading and cutting-edge platform available on the market.

What is an employee portal for equity management software?

An employee portal is a self-service platform for employees to manage their equity awards by themselves. Everything a participant needs or wants is located via the employee portal – accept, manage, view, transfer and sell their equity awards.

Participants will be given a link to the portal with login credentials. They can log into their account anytime, anywhere and see exactly what stock they have and how much it’s worth.

Benefits of a self-service online employee portal

With a well-designed employee portal to go together with an equity management software program, you’ll benefit from

• Building a true ownership culture by engaging your employees from enrollment through vesting on to making a sale.
• Reducing human error since employees manage their own data, which eliminates duplication and data being sent back and forth.
• Minimising administrative workload as employees are able to manage their equity and view what they own without needing extra help.
• Avoiding delays that can frustrate your employees.

At Global Shares, we’ve developed our self-service portal with more advanced and practical features and benefits to bring the full value of equity compensation. Read on.

Components of our employee portal

The Global Shares employee portal serves as an extension of your company and will enhance the relationship between your business and your employee, allowing them to fully experience their ownership in the company with our functions:

• Stock portfolio overview and breakdown
• Tasks assigned, e.g. Plan enrollment, award acceptance, tax election, account opening
• Resources, e.g. Document library, FAQs, videos, useful links, glossary, window dates
• My shares, e.g. Issuance date, no. of issued shares, Fair Market Value (FMV) at issuance, gain/loss
• Transact, e.g. exercise or sell their shares real-time
• Helpdesk with multi-lingual support

These components are under your full control. You can add, delete and update them in your admin system in order to keep your participants up to date. Let’s read more about our platform’s benefits:

1. Easy to use one-stop shop

Our employee portal is a one-stop shop.

Participants can enrol or accept awards, vote in the Annual General Meeting (AGM)or transact, submit instructions, view documents and downloadable statements, access the service desk, as well as see and understand their entire equity portfolio.

A one-stop shop doesn’t mean it’s cluttered or confusing. We strike a balance – comprehensive, but clear to navigate. Novice users can easily understand their portfolio and how to manage it, while more experienced users are able to examine it further.

2. Excellent resources with support

We encourage participants to check the extensive resource section, e.g. FAQs, videos, and user/tax guides, in their account. All of these can be quickly and easily updated by your plan administrators, without the need for technical input or assistance.

Your plan participants will also have access to a help desk, 24 hours per day, five days per week. It helps them take full advantage of this resourceful place and considerably reduces your administration workload.

3. Global access – no matter where in the world employees are based

These days, companies are getting larger and expanding across the globe. That’s why our employee portal is globalised – no matter where your participants are, they are able to access their equity awards, 24/7 via our portal.

The Global Shares employee portal is also multi-lingual – users can easily switch back and forth between their preferred languages with the click of a button. It’s the same for currencies. This way, participants would be able to understand the value of their awards and how to manage their assets effectively with minimised barriers.

4. Integrated trading solution

Our regulated status allows us to offer brokerage services for share plan participants around the world. All participants are given control and are able to easily and quickly transact whenever and at very competitive rates. Trade confirmations are visible online for complete transparency.

Once they’re logged in, a real-time stock price is displayed to update you on the current value. The platform has a wide range of features that engage your participants in equity management.

5. Modelling calculators

Our modelling calculators allow the user to calculate potential payouts, taxes, and exchange rates in various scenarios.

6. Highly customisable

You can incorporate company logos and tailored-to-match fonts, colours, layouts and aesthetics of your corporate requirements. Not just your logos, images, and colours – but your personalised messaging, news, and updates.

7. Full transparency

With a fully digital platform, employees have 24/7 access to their awards. Anytime, anywhere. What they have and what it’s worth – it’s at their fingertips.

8. High level of security

Global Shares uses the highest standards to protect the valuable data and assets we hold on behalf of our clients. We have a team of in-house cyber security and IT professionals to protect our system, oversee potential threats, and carry out security audits, due diligence, and penetration testing.

We are fully regulated, accredited, and certified by a range of statutory and non-statutory bodies.

How to incorporate the employee portal into your communication plan for equity management

Now, you understand an employee portal is a great tool to have when managing employee equity. Here are some practical tips to make the most of it:

1. Use it as one of your channels to communicate equity compensation: 

When communicating equity compensation, you have multiple materials that you want to share with your employees, e.g. guides, documents and videos. No matter what channel(s) you use for communication, you can also upload them to the portal to consolidate all information for participants to review. It’s the beauty of a one-stop shop.

2. Encourage employees to log on to their accounts regularly:

In any organised events like zoom meetings and coffee mornings, you can remind participants of this self-service platform that they can access 24/7 anywhere to manage their equity and check any resources. Some may forget this after their first log-in. So, if you want to engage them, make sure they remember this platform.

3. Make sure to update the documents and info:

If you want to make the best of an employee portal to deliver the full value of equity compensation, make sure participants can always access the up-to-date documents from there. If not, they’ll start to doubt what they’ve signed up for.

4. Utilise banners and carousel images to deliver news and important messages:

When you’re looking to deliver an important message to participants, you need something bigger and more visually powerful to catch their attention. We get that. So, we have features, like carousel images and banners, that enable you to customise your communication effectively.

We didn’t build the portal with ourselves in mind, but rather with the participants and clients. We aimed for simplicity, and our Product Roadmap is constantly filled with improvements and leaps forwards to keep making it even simpler. 

Contact us today for a no-obligation, free demo of our platform to see how you can use it to boost employee engagement.

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