Ladbrokes offers text registration for sharesave

EXCLUSIVE: Ladbrokes has re-launched communications for its latest sharesave scheme, and introduced SMS text message registration for staff.

Its three and five-year sharesave schemes, which have been offered to staff since 1983, allow 14,000 eligible employees to save up to £250 per month. Staff have also received a 20% discount on shares at the start price from 9 May.

The scheme is open for registration until 29 May. In previous years, employees registered for the scheme by telephone. Staff can now register via SMS text, by sending the word ‘SAYE’, their user ID, followed by the numbers 3 or 5, and the amount they want to save each month.

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Phil Rixon, senior reward manager at Ladbrokes, said: “They text that to a given number and receive a text back with confirmation that their details have been updated. We have had 50% of the take-up so far using SMS.”

The sharesave scheme has been incorporated into the bookmaker’s online benefits portal, Ladbrokes Reward Arena, which was launched in February 2013 to help communicate pensions auto-enrolment and the organisation’s 1 March staging date.

The portal has a single branding, and includes access to other benefits, such as a voluntary benefits scheme and an employee assistance programme (EAP).

Rixon added: “Rather than having it as a standalone piece of reward with its own branding, we brought it in line with how we are communicating pensions auto-enrolment, and using the same language, the same style and the same graphics.

“We are trying to get to that efficient frontier of reward, so one reward strand naturally speaks to another, raising engagement and enthusiasm levels across the piece.”

Ladbrokes intends for the online portal to eventually contain all elements of the total reward package, but the first step was to add in the sharesave scheme information.

The scheme, which is provided by Computershare Plan Managers, was also communicated via the organisation’s internal email system and letters sent to home addresses.