Summary
The two key ways organizations can increase equity participation and employee share ownership are to help employees accumulate wealth while managing their financial risks, and implement policies and practices that create an engaging ownership culture.
Based on a large body of research mostly conducted by Rutgers Institute for Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, the top 10 recommendations to achieve these objectives are listed.
Implementing these recommendations will benefit employees and their organizations, as well as help address the growing concern of income and wealth inequality. Employee share ownership has attracted growing attention for its potential to improve economic outcomes for companies, workers and the economy in general, and help reduce inequality. Research demonstrates that employee share ownership can improve employees’ performance-related attitudes and behaviors, including organizational commitment, motivation, cooperation, information sharing, and anti-shirking (Blasi et al., 2010). Improvements in such attitudes and behaviors can in turn lead to improved firm performance, which helps to account for the overall positive relationship that studies have found between employee ownership and firm performance.