Employee Share Ownership Basics - CLEO Skip to main content
Find a selection of basic introductory resources about employee share ownership below.
What is employee share ownership? By employee share ownership we mean any arrangement in which employees own equity shares in the businesses where they work. It can take a wide variety of specific forms. Examples include Employee Stock Ownership Plans, Employee Stock Purchase Plans, Stock Grants and Restricted Stock Units, Worker Cooperatives, Employee Ownership Trusts, and Stock Options.


Mini Film from We the Owners: Employees Expanding the American Dream

Foundation for Enterprise Development, Passage Productions, The National Center for Employee Ownership | June, 2013

We the Owners: Employees Expanding the American Dream is a documentary from the Foundation for Enterprise Development that follows three companies of different sizes in different industries and regions (New Belgium Brewing, Namaste Solar, and DPR Construction) that use employee ownership in diverse ways (an ESOP, a worker cooperative, and a phantom stock plan respectively). … Read More

Having a Stake: Evidence and Implications for Broad-based Employee Stock Ownership and Profit Sharing

Douglas Kruse, Joseph Blasi, Richard B. Freeman | December, 2019

At the center of the ongoing debate about the causes and cures of inequality in America today is the vast difference in wealth between owners and workers. As many have noted, that gap was not nearly as large in the middle of the twentieth century as it has become in the first two decades of the 21st century, where owners and other executives make many multiples of what workers make – largely through grants of stock in lieu of salary.

Who Should Own Your Business After You? A Guide for Business Owners

Democracy at Work Institute, The National Center for Employee Ownership | January, 2021

This booklet helps business owners evaluate employee ownership. Thousands of business owners have decided that employee ownership is the best way to preserve the job security of their workforces and protect the character of their companies while providing them and their families fair value. In “Who Should Own Your Business After You?,” several of them … Read More

The Case for Employee Ownership

Hilary Abell | May, 2020

The case for employee ownership is undisputed. As philanthropists and government leaders grapple with how to address both long-entrenched and newly-emerging forms of economic insecurity, there is no better time to look to effective but lesser-known solutions, such as employee ownership. Even before the economic crisis brought on by COVID-19, income and wealth inequality and downward economic mobility for frontline workers were truths so obvious that one could visually observe them in most communities. Now, more than ever, we need solutions that create economic resiliency for workers and local economies.