IAFP Round Table for Employee Shareholding

On June 14th 2021, Jorgen had the pleasure of being the moderator of the yearly IAFP Round-Table 2021. Here country organizations, companies and academia, interested in and convinced of the advantages of employee shareholding and financial participation, meet and exchange.

This year we had a very strong line-up of international companies from across Europe presenting. Essilor-Luxottica from France/Italy, Draeger from Germany, Qframe from Belgium, Temenos from Switzerland, Unilever from UK/Netherlands and Rio Tinto from UK.

At the end Jorgen made the following summary and conclusions of what we had heard at the round-table:

1. The employee shareholding or financial participation in various forms can work in all sizes of companies, from 100 employees to 100.000 employees and more.
2. There are many technical challenges to face both in the individual countries and with currencies. In some cases these can turn out to be of advantage to the employees participating.
3. There is a real commitment regarding organization, teams and costs for the companies deciding to implement an employee shareholding or participation model.
4. The companies underlined the needs to take the cultural challenges into consideration, when implementing employee shareholding models across many countries.
5. Most companies implementing employee shareholding plans do this with the aim of implementing them across the groups in as many countries as possible. This in order to engage all the employees.
6. Many companies are looking at new ways to modernize their employee shareholding and participation plans. Adjusting them to the expectations of the younger generations with shorter vesting times being part of this.
7. The employee subscriptions to the plans proposed during the pandemics, have in general been very good. The conclusions were that this shows how the employees are committed and believing in the future of their companies, thereby being ready to invest in them.
8. The companies are all very committed to and convinced of the importance these employee share plans have on the engagement of their employees. Comment like: we are in this together, people are key, be entrepreneurial, owners mindset, were common.