ESOP Communication (Breakfast)
| Event title: | Successfully communicating your ESOP to your staff and so ensuring their buy-in |
| Event type: | Informative Breakfast |
| Event date: | This event is not running at present. Please check back soon. |
| Event time: | 08:00 – 10:00 |
| Event cost: | R150 per person, excluding VAT |
| Event venue: | Grapnel House, 3 Glenhove Road, Melrose Estate, Johannesburg |
To book for this event contact Lauren Meyer on 083 283 2199 or
lauren@ownershipsolutions.co.za .
About this event:
- Do your employees really understand what the ESOP means to them?
- Do they understand what a share is?
- Do they understand what drives their benefits?
- Do they understand that exogeneous events like the global credit crisis, exchange rates and interest rates can have an effect on their final payouts?
- But most importantly, do you have buy-in from your employees?
It’s all about education and managing expectations
The implementation of an ESOP is a perfect opportunity to educate your employees on what actually drives your company and its share price. This is even more important as we enter a period of share volatility. An ESOP is probably one of the largest investments that a company will make in its employees, but sadly all the investment goes into the finance and not enough into the communication of the scheme.
International best practice uses ESOP’s as a manner of motivating employees and driving growth. In South Africa, the ESOP is often an afterthought, with a simple BEE compliance focus.
Whether you are a large company and your scheme is purely another employee benefit, or a smaller company where you are helping to change behaviour, an ESOP should always be about shared growth.
Zweli Biyela, Director at Ownership Solutions is an expert in communicating financial literacy and getting employee buy-in into the schemes. He has been involved in communicating and educating employees at some of South Africa’s Best practice examples, including Hulamin, Robor Pipe and Tubes, the V&A Waterfront and Shanduka Coke Cola Beverages.
In this breakfast session Zweli will explain:
- The importance of training key influencers,
- The use of parables in explaining financial concepts in English and the vernacular languages,
- Why feedback is important,
- How to get the buy in of Union Representatives,
- The use of comic strips, video and practical gifts / hand-outs to entrench the message.
It is the communication of the scheme to your employees that builds trust in the scheme.
About the presenters:
Zweli Biyela
Zweli is a Director: ESOP Communications at Ownership Solutions and is responsible for all ESOP communication and Trustee training. He holds a diploma in marketing and a junior degree in business administration. He has ten years working experience of which he spent two years in the area of training and the remaining eight years in the employment of the Development Bank of South Africa and the professional services firm (PricewaterhouseCoopers). In these institutions he was employed as an assistant in marketing and a co-coordinator, project finance and risk management consultant.
Presently, Zweli is a project manager for debt counseling for the National Credit Regulator (NCR) and the Banking Association of South Africa. He serves on the National Banking Forum Committee and as a co-chairperson of the National Credit Act (NCA) Working Committee, he is responsible for debt counseling rules. He is also a Secretary of the Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP) Trust. He has facilitated financial literacy sessions for SASOL Limited, financial management for B3 Insurance Group (Executive Management), DBSA (staff). He advised and rolled out ESOP communication to inter alia Tongaat Hullet Group Limited, Robor (Proprietary) Limited and Hullamin Limited
Bruce Hunt
Bruce Hunt is a Director of Ownership Solutions (Pty) Ltd and Transcend Corporate Advisors (Pty) Ltd, the two leading BEE Advisory Firms in South Africa. He is a specialist in designing and implementing democratic Employee Owned Trusts, Broad Based Empowerment Schemes and structuring Multinational BEE Empowerment deals. He has a particular competence in designing tax efficient sustainable employee trusts that drive value for both the business and the employees. His fundamental belief is that employee ownership, implemented properly, will substantially change the culture of a business and drive profitability. Bruce spent the previous 18 months developing and setting up CIDA City Campus’s Empowerment initiative and negotiating CIDA’s business interests. He has been consulting in the ownership aspects of empowerment with a special emphasis on employee ownership trusts, dispute resolution and the equitable and tax efficient closing of deals. He also lectured Corporate Strategy for Milpark Business School’s MBA Program. Prior to that, Bruce worked for Investec Bank for five years. During this period he was involved in managing and structuring the banks foreign asset and liability interest rate and currency positions. He was a proprietary trader and was a specialised derivative and debt structurer. Prior to joining Investec he spent four years in the printing and heavy engineering businesses as a turnaround consultant. He holds a B.Comm degree from the University of Cape Town, is a Chartered Financial Analyst and has an MBA from Manchester Business School. Bruce is also a founding Director of the Employee Ownership Association of Africa.