Kainos' £18 million Employee Share Schemes win award

Date posted
18 December 2018
Reading time
5 Minutes

Kainos' £18 million Employee Share Schemes win award

Kainos Group plc (KNOS), a global provider of digital services and platforms, has been highly commended at the 2018 ProShare Annual Awards.

ProShare, the leading UK employee share ownership member organisation, positioned as 'the voice of employee share ownership', aims to foster responsible employee share ownership. The awards recognised Kainos for demonstrating that its philosophy, attitudes and actions are conducive to fostering employee share ownership in the longer term.

'We are very proud to be recognised for this prestigious award. One of the reasons that we became a public company in 2015 was to create the opportunity for all staff to become shareholders and we have been delighted with both the level of participation and the success of our schemes.'

Kainos operates a number of different schemes, with the 'Free Shares' and 'Save As You Earn' schemes being the most popular amongst staff.

Under the 'Free Shares' scheme, Kainos gifts shares to all staff on an annual basis, including part-time and entry-level staff. The 2018 programme has just completed, with the latest award bringing the total to £8.763m worth of shares awarded to staff since the July 2015 IPO.

The 'Save As You Earn' scheme allows employees to pay a set amount each month directly from a salary into a savings account for a set period; once the scheme ends, colleagues have the option to buy company shares at a price set when the scheme began. In this scheme, awards over shares worth £9.352m have been issued since the IPO.

'It is the people within Kainos who have made us successful, so it is really important to us that all colleagues own shares it is another way for us to say 'thank-you' to everyone,' Mooney concludes. 'Some of our colleagues have sold part of their shareholding and we have been delighted to hear of the stories about how they have used the funds. Equally, we are so pleased that 78% of colleagues have retained shares and remain excited about the future of the company.'

Kainos intends to continue to run these schemes in the future and operates equivalent schemes for staff in UK, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Netherlands and the USA.

* all monetary amounts calculated on a share price of 400p, correct as at 17 December 2018.