Ocado staff receive sharesave payout of Pounds 7,900

EXCLUSIVE: Ocado employees have received average payouts of Pounds 7,900 after its first three-year sharesave scheme matured.

The sharesave scheme, provided by Capita Employee Benefits, matured on 1 December 2013.

The six-month maturity period, during which time members decide how to exercise their options, came to a close in June.

Joanna Gordon-Utting, reward and benefits manager at Ocado, said: "55% of employees in the scheme decided to keep their shares.

"The other 45% decided to either sell them all or sell part of the shares and keep the rest as certificates."

The online supermarket communicated the sharesave options by writing direct letters and emailing staff.

It also trained its HR team about the options so that they could answer questions from staff.

When the sharesave scheme was launched in 2010 the share option price was Pounds 1.16 and employees received a 15% discount. The average share price during the six-month period after maturity was Pounds 4.52.

"The average payout for employees who sold their options was Pounds 7,900," said Gordon-Utting. "The payouts to individuals ranged from Pounds 1,000 to more than Pounds 40,000. One of the employees who received the highest payout was one of our hourly-paid drivers."

Ocado will include an article about the 2010 sharesave scheme's success in the next issue of its internal magazine, Juice. Gordon-Utting adds: "We are looking at employee's good news stories, in terms of what they've done with the money."

The organisation launched its third three-year sharesave scheme in December, when its first scheme matured. More than 1,000 of its 7,400 employees are in the scheme.

A three-year sharesave scheme was launched in 2012. Nearly 1,500 staff are in on,e or both, schemes.

The 2012 sharesave scheme will mature at the end of May 2015, at which point it will launch another three-year scheme.

Ocado also intends to increase the savings limits, from Pounds 250 to Pounds 500, in line with the government's changes, which took effect from 6 April 2014.

Credit: Jennifer Paterson