Wates

In 2022 a new profit share scheme was introduced at Wates, bringing changes to employee bonuses – and with more than 2,800 employees across multiple divisions, it brought a significant and complex change within the business.

As a company that is committed to offering fair opportunities to all, Wates designed the new profit share scheme, MyShare, to suit both the needs of the business and staff. MyShare replaced the existing bonus scheme that employees were accustomed to from previous years, but ensured a fairer, more flexible approach to variable pay and offered a fair opportunity for every employee in the scheme to benefit.

With bonus communications often triggering emotional reactions from employees, it was crucial Wates launched MyShare in a way that provided clarity to employees and helped them understand why the bonus scheme was changing.

Something Big’s content team were quick to immerse in the details of MyShare, and after gaining a full understanding of how the scheme works, they took this information to clearly outline what it meant for employees. Written in simple, human language that aligned with Wates’ tone of voice, this content was used to inform our creative team to enable their design of a series of launch assets.

As well as creating an interactive brochure, email communications and presentation deck, we wrote a dedicated email for People Managers across the business that introduced them to MyShare. This, along with a detailed FAQ document, equipped them with the tools they needed to confidently lead their teams through this change.

Following the launch of MyShare, we helped Wates communicate the first bonus payment through the new scheme, including creating a visual identity for a personalised employee statement which detailed the level of bonus they would receive. We developed a clean creative style that allowed for simple representation of numbers and calculations and created multiple versions of the MyShare Annual Statement to allow for full personalisation – by level in the organisation, division or divisions worked in over the financial year.

Working in partnership with the Rewards and Benefits team, we advised the best way to mail merge the data for each employee’s statement and supported the team throughout the process, providing guidance on design, recommended fields and page layouts, and responding to new information as divisional results became available.