In this interview with Joanna Mak, the Senior Manager of the MyShare Plan at Brambles, Joanna shares some of the strategies that led to a 5% increase in the MyShare participation rate during the global pandemic. Brambles is an Australian supply-chain logistics company that operates in over 60 countries. Almost half of Brambles’ 11,000 employees participate in the MyShare employee share plan.
Hi Joanna! Thank you so much for joining us to chat about your work at Brambles managing the MyShare Plan. Can you please tell us a little bit about the MyShare Plan at Brambles?
MyShare is Brambles’ global Employee Share plan. It has been designed to give Employees the opportunity to build ownership in the company. Through participation in MyShare, employees can purchase shares in Brambles and have those shares matched by Brambles on a 1:1 basis if certain conditions are met. In 2021, we offered it to 11,000 employees and we achieved a participation rate of 47%. Almost half of the company’s employees are in the MyShare program – it is a very exciting time for us.
You mentioned that the current participation rate is 47%. How has this figure changed over the years?
MyShare started in 2009 with an average contribution rate of AUD 2000 per annum. The participation rate back then was 21%. Today, the average contribution rate is AUD 3200 and the participation rate is 47%, so we have came a long way over the past 13 years. This year we experienced a significant 5% increase in share plan participation compared to last year.
A 5% increase in share plan participation compared to last year is quite remarkable given the difficult operating environment over the last 12 months. What contributed to the rise in the participation level? Did you do anything differently compared to previous years?
Due to Covid and the significant delays in postal mail across countries, we had to make all the MyShare communications and sign up processes electronic (no more hard copy forms!).
With half of the employee population being site/blue collar workers with no company email address, I did a personal email address drive to ask employees to submit their personal email address on to the HRIS system. It is not an easy task and we only managed to get a few hundreds email addresses out of a few thousand that are missing.
For the rest of the employees where they did not have a personal email address or did not wish to provide an email address, their MyShare invitation was sent to their supervisors / managers to then be distributed to them. As a result of this new process, supervisors had to talk to their employees about the MyShare program which I think also helped with promoting the program.
How do you go about communicating the MyShare plan given that you have a diverse international workforce of employees that speak a number of different languages?
The MyShare website helps (it is available in several languages to meet the needs of those working in different countries) and on top of that the local HR also provides massive support in explaining the plans to the employees.
I can imagine you faced some other interesting challenges in communicating the offer to a global workforce in the middle of a pandemic. How did you overcome these hurdles and what was the response from employees?
In addition to the electronic communications and the email address collection, I also conducted a few global all employee webinars where all employees were introduced the MyShare program. I also did a few special sessions for HR, so they were given the heads up before the enrolment period began and they were able to help employees locally if there were any questions.
What are the key takeaways from the success of this years’ offer and the high level of participation in the MyShare Plan more generally?
The key is to communicate to the employees using as many different channels as possible. Face-to-face presentations are good as you get to discuss things in detail and employees can ask questions. Whereas online webinars allow me to reach employees from all around the world. So, in the future, I will do a combination of both (face-to-face presentations and webinars) as different types of communications will reach different audiences and drive a more impactful result.
Lastly, can you reflect on the impact that the MyShare Program has on the people that work at Brambles and for the company at large?
The MyShare program has a significant impact on employees’ life. Through the MyShare program, some employees have been able to save up a large sum of money to buy new cars, pay for family holidays, pay for housing deposits etc. As for Brambles, the MyShare program is a good retention mechanism – the tenure for MyShare participants are 8.58 years, whereas non-participants’ average tenure is 6.52 years.
Thank you Joanna!
