I was fortunate to be the moderator for one of the Conference sessions, “QUALCOMM and Microsoft: Gold Standards in Employee Communication.” It was very exciting to see all the top-notch communications policies and practices in place at these two companies! I can’t share them all with you in just one blog entry, but today I share my absolute favorites.

Custom Alerts

Custom communications are a fantastic tool for alerting employees to important events or necessary actions. What impressed me the most about the alert systems that used by both of these companies is that they are able to send out alerts for upcoming events from an internal email address. Your broker may be able to help with some or all of these alerts. However, the cool thing about taking it in-house is that when essential messages come directly from the stock plan services team, employees are trained to pay attention to both their equity compensation and other communications from the team.

There are a number of alerts and notifications that may be useful to employees. These three really stood out:

Countdown to Grant Acceptance Deadline

If you have a grant acceptance policy with teeth (e.g.; recipients forfeit the grant if not accepted within a specific timeframe), this particular alert is particularly important. Even if there are no defined consequences for failure to accept a grant, reminding an employee periodically that there is a grant that requires acceptance is a best practice. Targeting employees who have this on their “to do list” greatly increases the odds that they will complete the grant acceptance process.

Upcoming RSU Vest

An upcoming RSU vest is a time for planning, both for the stock plan services team and the employee. Including action items in an alert to employees helps them prepare. If there are any choices or actions that have a deadline (like broker selection, tax payment method, or grant acceptance), this type of alert may be your last chance to get their attention.

Unexercised Option Expiration

An automated alert sent directly to employees notifying them of an in-the-money option that is about to expire is great for them and can reduce risk for the company. Notifying them of a deeply underwater option that is about to expire, on the other hand, is just rubbing salt in the wound. Create parameters that weed out the options that have no hope of being in the money before expiration and you’ve got yourself a stellar communications practice!

Rolling out a new plan

Many companies are changing the way they look at equity compensation. This presentation offers many unique practices for rolling out a new plan or compensation philosophy to employees. If your company is considering changing the compensation mix, introducing a new equity compensation vehicle, or expanding performance grants to a larger population, this presentation has some essential tips for you. These three ideas were my favorites:

Blog

This one really is timeless. Having information available on the intranet is great. Actually, it’s essential in my book. A blog that employees can either subscribe to or go for the latest updates and archived of information and FAQs gives you a forum that is dynamic and current. Implement it when rolling out something new, and keep it up to feed employees information in bite-sized pieces later on!

Webcasts by Location

Again, this is another idea that is fantastic for communicating a new plan, but doubles as an ongoing tool that is especially helpful for new hires. Webcasts can be saved for download on the intranet or aired at special meetings or new hire orientations. Customizing the information to fit each country or location, including translation if necessary, really personalizes equity compensation in a way that one generic presentation simply can’t. This way, employees will see grant sizes, tax implications, and brokerage information that is applicable to them.

Practice Communications

I was totally tickled by this idea! You start by creating focus groups to find out what verbiage and format gets the best results. Then, test out your dissemination process on another group. The example from the presentation is a “cascading” communications strategy, an advanced version of “train the trainer”. The information starts with the VPs and moves on down the organizational chart with each level speaking to the employees directly under them. This can be a highly effective communications strategy, but it could turn out like a bad game of “telephone.” Taking a dry run lets you see what your end result is with your test group and gives you time to make necessary adjustments before implementing the communication process for the entire company.

-Rachel