Specsavers: Structuring reward in a high-growth business

Specsavers was founded in 1984 by Doug and Mary Perkins, who started the business in their spare bedroom on a table-tennis table. The couple had moved to Guernsey after selling a small chain of West Country opticians. Since then the company has grown rapidly through its joint venture partnership approach to eye care.

From just two staff working at that table-tennis table, there are now more than 500 employees based at Specsavers' headquarters in Guernsey and around 26,000 worldwide. The company has more than 1,390 stores across the Channel Islands, UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Spain, Australia and New Zealand.

What you will find in this report

Such fast growth has, of courses, produced reward challenges, particularly the need for greater structure, resulting in a project to introduce a simple, clear and practical approach to grading and total reward for the 1,500 staff in the company’s UK and Channel Islands head offices in 2009/10.

This case study, written and researched by e-reward, examines:

• why Specsavers decided to revamp its pay and grading structure
• some of the guiding principles underpinning the new arrangements
• the process used to develop the five broad bands
• how benefits provision was developed
• using market data
• the bonus schemes used to get people really engaged
• lessons learnt.