Employee share schemes (ESS) are fast becoming a mainstream people and culture strategy in Australia, with organisations moving beyond salary and bonuses to offer staff a genuine stake in the businesses they help build.
Susannah Batley, general manager of Sharesies, says HR leaders are increasingly turning to ESS not as a financial add-on, but as a tool for cultural alignment.
“An employee share scheme is about ownership,” Batley said. “It’s a way for a company to say: if you’re helping build this, you should share in what it becomes. That might sound simple, but it represents a pretty meaningful shift in how we think about work and reward.”
The shift comes as traditional reward strategies face growing scrutiny across Australian workplaces, with HR leaders reporting difficulty securing long-term commitment through salary alone.
Beyond wages: the case for ownership
Batley argues that the fundamental appeal of ESS lies in what it offers employees that a pay rise cannot.
“For most people, wealth has traditionally come from wages. You exchange time and effort for income. That income can grow over time, but it’s ultimately capped. It’s linear,” she said.
“Real wealth creation, historically, has come from something different – ownership. Owning shares. Owning businesses. Owning assets that grow and generate returns over time.”
For HR teams, that distinction opens a different kind of value proposition. Rather than competing purely on remuneration, organisations can offer employees the opportunity to participate in the financial upside they help generate.
From a business perspective, Batley said the benefits extend well beyond the financial. “When people own part of what they’re building, they tend to think longer term. They care more about outcomes, not just outputs. There’s a stronger connection between individual contribution and collective success.”
ESS can also represent a material shift in total reward. Most schemes include vesting periods, commonly three years, which directly incentivise loyalty. For employees at private companies, significant financial returns are possible if the business reaches milestones such as a sale, merger or public listing.
A growing trend in Australian workplaces
Employee share schemes are not new, but their reach is expanding. In the United Kingdom, approximately 80% of FTSE 100 companies offer some form of ESS, according to Batley. In the US, employee ownership is embedded in the culture of many large organisations.
In Australia, uptake has accelerated in recent years. Research by the Australian Department of Industry, Science and Resources identified ESS as an important component of remuneration strategies for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), particularly in the period following the disruption of COVID-19.
“Locally across Australia, share schemes have become more common in recent years with many companies offering their employees equity to help retain and incentivise them during COVID-19 uncertainties,” Batley says.
The nature of that conversation is also changing. HR leaders exploring equity as part of a total rewards strategy are now less focused on whether to offer ESS, and more focused on how to make them accessible and meaningful to employees.
“What’s changing now is less about adoption, and more about accessibility and participation. Historically, these schemes have often been complex, hard to understand, and difficult for employees to engage with. That’s starting to shift,” said Batley.
What good looks like
For HR leaders looking at implementation, Contact Energy, an ASX and NZX-listed energy generator and retailer with more than 1,300 employees, offers a benchmark worth examining.
In 2025, over 90% of Contact Energy’s eligible employees participated in the company’s ESS, giving them the potential to become employee shareholders. Each year, eligible employees receive a fixed dollar amount of shares that vest over three years, gradually building a meaningful stake in the business.
“That might sound like a small thing, but it matters,” Batley explained. “Ownership only really works if people can see and engage with what they own. When it becomes visible, it becomes real.”
The result, she says, has been measurable engagement uplift. “We’ve seen that translate into stronger engagement. People pay more attention. They ask more questions. They feel more connected to the business.”
For people leaders, Batley’s message is direct: ESS should sit in the HR toolkit, not be left to finance or legal teams to manage in isolation.
Schemes that are well-communicated, simply structured and made visible to employees can transform equity from a contractual line item into a lived experience of ownership – one that reinforces engagement and retention across the workforce.
“In the end, it’s about creating that genuine sense of ‘we’re in this together’,” Batley said. “When you get that right, an Employee Share Scheme stops being a perk – and starts becoming a core part of how you build and sustain a great organisation.”