the 2018 Sharesave the most successful to date. Take up and average savings increased by 36%.
Who are CVS Group?
CVS Group is the largest integrated veterinary services provider in the UK, operating a network of 460 practices and employing around 5,500 people.
CVS (UK) Limited was established in August 1999 to acquire and operate veterinary practices with a reputation for high quality service. Since then the company has continued to grow through acquisition and diversification, moving into many other aspects of the veterinary business, ensuring their customers can access the best possible care, whatever their needs.
Our challenges and objectives
CVS launched a Sharesave in 2008, shortly after being listed. Colleagues had played a significant role in the establishment and growth of the business and with ambitious plans for the future CVS were keen to provide them with an opportunity to share in the success of the business at the earliest opportunity.
Whilst the company share price grew significantly over a short period and many colleagues had benefited greatly from Sharesave, participation had grown relatively slowly. CVS were aware of the underlying reasons for this and had wanted to address them for some time:-
- Rapid growth through acquisition meant that not all colleagues felt connected to the Group
- A very dispersed workforce made communicating with colleagues difficult
- Not all colleagues were aware of Sharesave; outside the invitation window it became almost invisible
- Many colleagues didn’t understand Sharesave
- Over 20% of eligible colleagues are 25 and under
- Many colleagues carry student debt and felt they couldn’t afford to contribute
The creation of significant extra headroom and the acquisition of two more businesses in the lead up to the 2017 Sharesave invitation provided the impetus to start addressing some of these issues. CVS were also approaching their most profitable maturity to date and were determined to equip participants with the tools that would help them make informed decisions. The company decided to focus on improving awareness and understanding of Sharesave through easy access to a broader range of resources delivered across a range of channels; introducing more technology and cutting dependency on paper.
What did we do?
CVS take a keen interest in colleague welfare and in particular their mental and financial wellbeing. They were already in the early stages of rolling out a ‘Mindfulness in the Workplace’ program, which they hoped would educate colleagues to better understand and manage their personal finances. Rather than dealing with Sharesave in isolation they decided to incorporate it within a wider program of work, helping colleagues to consider Sharesave within a broader context.
Having noticed how active colleagues were on their mobile devices during break times and with such a dispersed workforce the company also concluded that the most effective way to deliver financial education was via email
communications, social media and providing easy access to an online portal. It was felt that providing a financial education package in this way would have the greatest impact, giving colleagues the freedom to choose how, when and for how long they accessed it.
CVS engaged with YBS Share Plans and started building a financial education portal that would be made available to colleagues ahead of the upcoming Sharesave invitation and maturity. The focus of the portal was to explain Sharesave in greater detail and simplicity than paper invitation packs allow and to introduce some additional tools and media (such as bitesize animations and interactive modelling tools) that would help break down barriers to participation and improve understanding of the key features of the plan. This information is supported by historical invitation details and plan documents, so colleagues can view all materials in one space.
Alongside Sharesave content is ‘Your Money Matters’, covering broader topics such as “living within your means”, household budgeting, personal savings and debt and effective pension provision. CVS believed this would help colleagues better understand the value of Sharesave and the importance of a regular saving habit.
During the Sharesave invitation planning stages it was decided to replace paper invitation packs with email invitations, supported by a series of promotional emails. This would allow communications to be issued more quickly and frequently than before and would be better received by younger colleagues and those dotted around the country in the network of practices. Using email also helped launch the financial education portal at the same time. Emails contained embedded links to both the web application pages and the financial education portal, providing colleagues with a comprehensive suite of information to help them make their decision.
Ahead of the first email, ‘teaser’ animations were placed on the company intranet, which was backed up by activity on the CVS twitter account (promoting the new resources) and testimonials posted on the company Facebook page, providing real examples of what colleagues had done with their gains in the past.
Outcomes and next steps
All of this together helped make the 2018 Sharesave the most successful to date. Take up and average savings increased by 36%. It was particularly pleasing that 44% of applicants had joined for the first time and take up among younger colleagues was particularly good. Traffic to the portal continued throughout the invitation and maturity windows with volumes five times larger than normal. These spikes of activity demonstrated that colleagues were using these to help make their decisions.
CVS have continued to issue regular bulletins on key financial topics to drive traffic to the portal and ensure colleagues continue to think about their finances. They’ve also hosted some colleague forums to collect feedback on activity to date and gather future requirements. As a consequence CVS have already committed to launching another workplace saving product with Salary Finance.