A major theoretical objection against employee ownership is that workers become inadequately diversified and exposed to excessive financial risk. Recent theory concludes that 10-15% of a worker’s wealth portfolio can be prudently invested in employer stock provided the rest of the portfolio is properly diversified. This paper analyzes employee share ownership in U.S. family financial … Read More
In 2015, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation engaged the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, to conduct a qualitative study examining the asset building impacts of employee ownership for low- and moderate-income employees and their families.
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 … Read More
Mission-led employee-owned firms embody a powerful model of enterprise design for a new era of environmental sustainability and social equity. These companies have much to teach the business world about ownership design for the 21st century and beyond. This report shares the story of this emerging model, embodied in 50-plus firms that are employee owned … Read More
American workers at nearly every level of the income spectrum fail to save properly to be secure in retirement. Addressing this challenge will require a comprehensive policy discussion by both federal and state policymakers. Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) are the primary form of employee ownership, and for reasons explored in this report, companies organized … Read More
This report explores access to equity compensation and capital shares in the tech sector, which merits special attention for the following two reasons. First, the tech industry is heavily supported by the federal government. Second, outside industries often emulate the innovative culture and practices of the technology sector.
Transitioning your small business to employee ownership can have positive impacts on employee engagement, productivity, and retention; anchor a lasting legacy for your efforts building the business; and offer a financially rewarding exit path that can be supported by experienced professional assistance. Small business owners throughout the United States are increasingly seeing employees as highly … Read More
The benefits of employee ownership as a strategy for achieving broad-based prosperity are well documented—but the growing field of impact investing has yet to fully recognize the key opportunity employee ownership presents for tackling economic inequality. In this Fifty by Fifty research brief, Mary Ann Beyster explores the existing landscape of employee ownership opportunities for … Read More
The National Center for Employee Ownership has released results from the first phase of an ongoing research project that compares the economic well-being of employee-owners early in their careers with that of other young workers.
This easy-to-read guide to employee ownership introduces what employee ownership means and how it works, interspersing information with company profiles. Also see the companion website at www.esopinfo.org.
Employee ownership is a situation in which employees have an ownership stake in the firm where they work, through holdings of firm stock. It is a channel through which employees share in the profits of the firm and can vote on important firm decisions and otherwise have increased participation in workplace decisions.
This 28-page report details the benefits of employee ownership in North Carolina as a way to preserve jobs and enhance community impacts.
This research report from the United Kingdom shows that the arrival of millennials in the workplace is not a threat to the employee owned business model. On the contrary, employee ownership works well to meet the aspirations of millennials, as it does for other generations. The ability of the employee ownership model to harness the … Read More
This paper by Jared Bernstein shows that employee ownership appears to have a small equalizing impact on wealth and wage distributions.
The opportunity to convert businesses to worker cooperatives is increasingly becoming recognized as a strategy for strengthening our local economies. The need—and opportunity—for lenders and other capital providers to participate in these sales transactions is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. But only a handful of lenders in the U.S. specialize in lending … Read More
This report has two goals. The first goal is to answer questions about undue risk in order to prevent companies from adopting employee ownership structures that endanger workers and jeopardize the collective benefits of broad-based sharing. The second goal is to help create widespread support for policies that would encourage greater adoption of beneficial employee … Read More
When a company does well, so should its workers. American workers have helped the economy grow by becoming more productive. Yet, even as productivity has increased, many middle- and working-class households have experienced stagnant wages and declining household incomes over the past few decades. This means workers currently receive only a small share of the … Read More
How does a business go about transitioning —“converting”— to a worker-owned cooperative? This report provides illustrations with case studies of businesses that have converted and highlights key lessons from those companies’ experiences. The report categorizes conversions into four types: Type I: Owner sells to existing employees with the intention of remaining with the company; Type … Read More
This brief focuses specifically on business owners and the racial wealth gap as related to African Americans and Latinos. As a group, Asian Americans face a smaller and narrowing wealth gap, and hold business and financial wealth at the same level as Whites. Native Americans face substantial challenges in creating income and wealth, but the … Read More
This report provides an update on progress of the 2012 Nuttall Review, including recommendations measured against the commitments made in the U.K. government response to the review. Progress has been made against all 28 of the Nuttall Review Recommendations and in over half of the recommendations progress has been assessed as having been significant. Work … Read More
A new study of business practices reveals powerful ways to create strategic and financial gains. Lower-wage workers, when supported by effective policies, boost productivity, quality, innovation, and revenues from new markets…
This Review looks at ‘short-termism’ within British business: the pressure to focus on short-term results to the possible detriment of the long-term health of a company, or even a whole industry. The investigation confirmed that short-termism constrains the ambition of UK business, holding back its development and inhibiting economic growth…
This review took evidence from a wide range of sources, covering, in particular, employee owned companies, sector representatives, professional advisers and employer and employee groups. The broad categories of obstacles to employee ownership were soon identified, and were continually reinforced as this review proceeded. They fall into the following three categories: a lack of awareness … Read More
The United Steelworkers, Mondragon International USA, and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center created this detailed model for developing sustainable jobs through a combination of worker ownership and unionization. This model, or template, for unionized cooperatives seeks to implement principles and values of the Mondragon model in combination with collective bargaining. The model is intended to … Read More
This booklet provides a “users’ manual” for workers, especially immigrant workers, and their advocates, for organizing a worker-owned cooperative as a worker empowerment strategy.