Equity plan comms: a free content creation model

Effective communication is vital if your employee equity compensation plan is to be a success. This means you need to devise a participant communications strategy that represents the proposed plan in ways most likely to reach and resonate with them. Read on to see how you could look to achieve that in a coherent and structured manner.

There are many elements that can influence how successful your employee equity compensation plan is going to be, but at or near the top will be your communications strategy. You might be introducing the most attractive equity plan ever designed, but if you don’t make that clear to your employees then that plan is unlikely to be as successful as it otherwise could. Getting your communications right is key and an effective communications strategy is vital if you are looking to fully unlock the potential of your employee equity compensation plan.

Structuring your communications strategy

While the specifics or the what of your communications will be driven by your unique offering, a key part of the process will be the way you go about disseminating that information – the how.

Considering this will help with your content creation model. It will encourage you to take a step back and think more consciously about the message you want to communicate, how you are going to communicate it, and to whom.

The step-by-step process of creating that structure might look like this:

• What do you want to achieve? Establish your goals and consider how you will measure these results. Yes, you want your employee equity compensation plan to be a success, but what will that look like? For example, do you want to achieve a certain enrolment percentage? Do you want to reduce employee attrition?
• Who is your target audience? Know the key characteristics of your eligible employees. Are they mainly office-based or factory floor or working remotely or a mix of all three? This matters because the composition and characteristics of your workforce should be kept in mind when designing and delivering information on the equity plan.
• What are your key messages? Know what you want to communicate and look to do so in as clear a manner as possible. You will be looking to highlight the merits of your equity plan, provide details on how it will play out over time (e.g., vesting, lock-in periods etc. as applicable), and you could also look to anticipate and answer employee questions before they ask them.
• How best to communicate key messages? Being clear on your target audience should inform subsequent decisions around how your message is delivered. For example, if the bulk of your eligible employees are factory floor-based, , you might choose to place posters in prominent locations or common areas. You might decide to hold in-person presentations and Q&A sessions. Alternatively, when looking to engage with a predominantly office-based or a remote population, you might lean more heavily on technology, e.g., email, live and on- demand webinars, intranet-hosted resources, online town halls etc.
• What is your timeline? Know your registration deadline and work back from there. For example, do you anticipate a three-month communications campaign leading up to the plan going live? If so posters will need to be put into circulation approximately 90 days before the cut-off. Your strategy should be precisely plotted out so that eligible employees receive reminders and information at regular junctures during the period between the initial contact and the registration deadline

Characteristics of effective equity compensation plan communications

So you’ve got the structure, but that’s not the end of the story. Think of the above as a skeleton, but you still need to put flesh on the bones, with the precise content guided by the specifics of your plan.

• Be concise and clear: Whether it’s written material or a spoken presentation, try to make your messages as short and to the point as possible. Employees tend to not to engage with lengthy documents or long presentations. Keep it tight, make it brief, avoid jargon and use language that is appropriate to your audience.
• Know your audience: This broad point was made earlier, but it merits reiteration. It is important that you know your employee profile and customize your approach accordingly, both in terms of the content of your messages and how those messages are delivered. To give your plan the best chance for success you should meet your employees where they are (figuratively and literally) and make the case for participation with their needs in mind first and foremost.
• Best material out front: Odds are your people are busy, so you can’t assume that they will take the time to carefully scrutinize all the information you provide them. That being the case, lead with your most compelling points, let them know why employee equity compensation represents a potentially lucrative opportunity for them from the very outset.
• Don’t oversell: You believe in your plan’s design and are eager for it to be a success; that is entirely reasonable, but be careful not to let your enthusiasm lead you into overselling. There is no such thing as a sure thing and it is important that you acknowledge that fact in your official communications. Yes, you will want to be positive and emphasize the potential upside, but if you overdo it you run the risk of undermining your credibility with your target audience.
• Measure your success: You’ll want to get a reliable gauge on the success of your communications strategy. That means looking at the goals you set at the outset and seeing how you have performed relative to those objectives by the time the registration period ends. One relatively straightforward metric is participation. Did you meet, exceed or fall short of your target? There will be many different variables in the mix, but if the participation rate exceeds your expectations, it would be reasonable to conclude that your communications strategy worked well. However, the same logic should also be applied in reverse. If the take-up rate proves to be disappointing, it may well be that communications- related shortcomings are partly responsible. It is important to recognize when this is the case so that whatever mistakes were made are not repeated in the future.

Contact us about optimizing your communications

At J.P. Morgan Workplace Solutions, our personnel have a wealth of experience in helping companies present their equity compensation plans to their employees. We’ve seen what works – and what doesn’t – and we’re ready to put those lessons to use for your plan. Contact us today, to see how we could help your company.