The Flight Centre Travel Group has launched a share-based retention scheme, called the Global Recovery Rights (GPR) programme.
Staff across the globe – excluding board members and senior executives – will be granted share rights if they continue their careers with the company through to December 31, 2022. The scheme comes as a response to Covid-19 and its ongoing effects on the company’s staff.
About 7,500 employees are expected to receive about 1.9 million shares under the programme at an expected non-cash cost of about AU$30 million (£16.4 million).
The scheme covers 850 people in the UK, with a total of 1,250 in Europe, across all Flight Centre Travel Group brands including Flight Centre UK, FCM Solutions and Corporate Traveller UK.
Most participants will receive one-off GPR grant of 250 share rights, which will vest in February 2023, when the company will release its December 2022 half-yearly results.
Steve Norris, UK managing director at Flight Centre Travel Group, said the GPR programme was designed to invest in and retain people “who would be integral to the company’s recovery post Covid-19”.
It will also help to preserve cash “while governments continue to impose heavy travel restrictions that were severely impacting demand for travel”.
He said: “The GPR programme underlines our people’s importance and recognises their efforts and loyalty since the pandemic began and heavy travel restrictions were imposed, adversely impacting their earning potential while they continued to work incredibly hard to help our customers secure refunds or rearrange their travel plans.
“It is first and foremost a retention programme that encourages our people to continue their careers with us during what we believe will be an important 18-month period as vaccinations programmes progress, trading conditions start to normalise and the recovery starts to gain momentum.
“In addition to being aligned with our strategic objectives, this new programme also gives our people a stronger degree of ownership of our company and thereby strengths the ties between their interests and those of our other shareholders in the mid-long term.”