Even when offices become marginally busier, work continues to look substantially different for millions of individuals worldwide. Key trends accelerated by COVID-19, such as greater automation and remote recruiting, appear to be here to stay. According to Stanford and Chicago academics, even once the epidemic is ended, we may anticipate remote working to settle at a level nearly four times greater than what we observed in 2017 and 2018.
These new workplace dynamics have far-reaching repercussions for fast-growing businesses. On the one hand, hiring has never been more exciting: great prospects can now be approached from anywhere in the globe, and asynchronous communication platforms allow teams to interact without needing to be in the same room, writing on the same whiteboard.
However, organizations expanding into new areas and hiring remote workers must address possible concerns with culture, leadership, and productivity. Equity is a component that connects all of these possible roadblocks. Utilizing equity and solving these difficulties will assist in attracting and retaining talent, which is the lifeblood of any successful firm. So, how could businesses plan for a more distant future while still treating people decently — wherever they may be?
In this essay, we will discuss three important issues that CEOs encounter while developing dispersed businesses. We’ll talk about key topics including hiring, employee engagement, and internal communications, and how these elements, when done correctly, contribute to increased employee ownership.
Contents
Ownership and equity in the post-COVID firm
Many firms will be unable to return to the working conditions that were imposed on us when lockdowns were implemented. According to one 2020 study, as much as 94 percent of employees found their productivity to be the same or greater than before the epidemic. Companies are adapting to this transition by investing in the procedures and technologies needed to create remote teams.
However, organizations that adopt a dispersed approach still face several problems. Companies have challenges when they develop due to regulatory issues, balancing short- and long-term objectives, and addressing workplace obstacles such as proximity bias.
Managing regulatory complexities
There is little doubt that allowing leaders to hire with a global view may offer significant value to teams. However, there is an increasing regulatory burden as well. Companies that hire in new markets must recognize where procedures must be modified. Employment agreements may need to be revised. Attitudes toward best practices for data security and privacy, such as GDPR, Schrems II, or SOC 2 Type 2, may differ by market. Of course, you may need to handle employee ownership and share options differently.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a universal sharing scheme that works everywhere. A British company moving into Germany, for example, cannot simply give its new employees the same EMI alternatives as are available in the UK. You must establish a clear plan for workers in each new market, taking into consideration the wider national environment and analyzing all accessible share plan choices.
Balancing short-term results with long-term goals
Share options are sometimes a touchy topic. They are one of the most important financial cornerstones of employee compensation packages, especially in early-stage enterprises that cannot give market-beating salaries. This means that workers’ share options must be visible from the start. Options are a long-term motivator, but good communication and information sharing should begin throughout the onboarding process. Otherwise, it may be difficult to strike the correct balance between short-term motivation and long-term rewards that link company and personnel performance.
Managing proximity bias to ensure fairness
Many organizations that use dispersed policies will retain a headquarters in a town or city where a large number of their people live and work. If a remote-only strategy is not practical, management risks perceiving staff working from the company’s headquarters as more devoted, more ‘fun,’ and deserving of better prospects. If not handled properly, this has the potential to cause severe employee dissatisfaction. Senior executives must consider carefully how to bring every employee together, as well as how to deliberately work against any inherent prejudices in favor of employees with whom they deal more frequently.
Managing these difficulties frequently falls to the operations and personnel departments. When it comes to equity, these departments are unquestionably present. However, equity allows the finance staff to go from the backstage to the front.
Helping organizations, workers, and investors understand the benefits of readily available equity is one of the most potent ways for finance executives to contribute to talent, development, motivation, and culture. Making sure to manage equity properly is especially crucial in a remote or hybrid situation, when keeping the organization focused on central agreed goals is critical.
Let’s take a look at the fundamentals of efficient equity management for remote teams, as well as some practical steps CFOs can take to improve their grasp of this critical issue.
Principles of stock ownership in a dispersed firm
Keeping track of equity can be difficult when your workforce is dispersed throughout many nations. The most effective equities managers share a few similar concepts that drive their strategy.
Transparency of data
Access to information is a vital component of good equity management. Locking away information on share options in spreadsheets is not an option if you want workers to feel truly invested in the company. This is especially true in a remote or distributed context.
The more context workers have, the better, but not all CFOs can offer information on, say, the size of the employee option pool or the vesting timelines for different employees. More transparent equality data means less time spent searching for solutions to common questions. If you have a limited number of employees or find value in using check stub maker for future payments tracking and other activities such as taking out loans, you may also utilize an online paystub generator.
Develop resources
Too many businesses make a one-time announcement, providing the larger staff with some basic information about their alternatives, and then assume the work is done. This can only result in disengaged personnel who may not understand the larger picture underlying the company’s growth initiatives. Do you have any materials to clarify more technical terms? Could you construct “worst-case,” “average,” and “best-case” scenarios to provide your staff a better understanding of how the value of their options may fluctuate over time? Understanding long-term fluctuations in the value of stock options may also help businesses retain talent in what will continue to be a competitive labor market.
Finally, in a remote-first world, how can equity be leveraged?
CFOs (and other functional executives) are under a lot of pressure right now. The contemporary finance department must be a growth engine as well as a manager of important business operations, especially in early-stage enterprises. With so many organizations revising their approach to remote options in the last 18 months, maintaining a cap table and employee share options now necessitates knowing processes and laws in worldwide markets, in addition to the numerous pre-existing issues.