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The Innovations in Employee Ownership Award

The Innovations in Employee Ownership Award (the "Innovations Award") is an annual award recognizing creative ideas that help make employee ownership stronger, and publicizing those ideas so others can learn from them. Innovations can deal with employee participation, entrepreneurship, communication programs, education, plan design, or other ideas that strengthen employee ownership.

The Innovations Award is sponsored by TEOCO Corporation. TEOCO, an acronym for "The Employee-Owned Company," is based in Fairfax, VA: see www.teoco.com. The award is administered jointly by the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) and the Beyster Institute (BI).

The NCEO and Beyster Institute unveiled the four winners of the 2009 Innovations Awards on April 23, 2009, at the Employee Ownership Conference in Portland, Ore.

2009 Winners

Namasté Solar

www.namastesolar.com
Boulder, Colorado

An innovative company in an innovative field, Namasté Solar is the leading installer of solar electric systems in Colorado. On an ongoing basis, the company offers full-time employees an opportunity to purchase shares through a restricted stock program. From its compensation system (ten salary tiers ensure that the highest salary is no more than twice the lowest) to a transparent decision-making system that combines the virtues of democracy with business efficiency, Namasté Solar provides a glimpse of what tomorrow's company may look like. Based in Boulder, Colorado, Namasté was recently hosted by President Obama during the signing of the historic stimulus bill.

Litehouse, Inc.

www.litehouseinc.com
Sandpoint, Idaho

Litehouse, Inc., is a company with lots of history. Now in its 50th year, Litehouse is both savvy and playful, as evident from its sales of over $140 million and its internal communications program, which makes tough-minded business lessons memorable by immersing them in a context that celebrates fun. Based in Sandpoint, Idaho, Litehouse makes salad dressing and other food products, but the company may stand out most for its relentless pursuit of business literacy among its work force, including an in-house re-creating the theme of the "Love Boat" for educational purposes. 30% of Litehouse shares are owned by an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).

Cooperative Home Care Associates

www.chcany.org
Bronx, New York

Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) is a South Bronx-based, worker-owned cooperative that provides home care services throughout New York City. With 1,550 employees, CHCA is currently the nation's largest worker-owned cooperative. CHCA has worked closely with SEIU Local 1199 in creating a formal Labor/Management Committee as a strategy to involve more employees in organizational decision-making. This initiative complements their efforts to provide home care workers with high-quality jobs characterized by above-market wages and benefits, full-time hours, opportunities for promotions as well as extensive training and support-all in contract to standard practices within New York City's home care industry.

Parametrix

www.parametrix.com
Auburn, Washington

ESOP-owned since 1992, Parametrix has long been a pillar of the employee ownership community. This year, Parametrix is being recognized for an internal education program designed to reach out to all employees with a focus on recent hires. Some of the unique features of this program are a multi-media outreach (participants receive a audio-visual invitation), a combination of hard numbers and thoughts on what ownership means, and an in-depth business simulation so people understand the impact of their role at the company. Based in Auburn, Wash., Parametrix provides consulting services for engineering, planning, and environmental sciences.

Learn More

  • About the Award Program (eligibility, how to nominate a company, criteria, prizes)
  • The application for the 2010 Innovations Award will be available in November 2009, both here and from the Beyster Institute.
  • We are looking for your recommendations! Click here to give us a tip on a company that would be a good candidate for the award.
  • View highlights from award winners in 2006, 2007, and 2008.

About the Award Program

1. Who Is Eligible to Win?

The award is open to any employee ownership company that promotes the spread of employee ownership plans or the development of best practices in employee ownership. (TEOCO Corporation is not eligible to win.)

For purposes of this award, "employee ownership" includes:
  • employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)
  • broad-based stock options ("broad-based" means that the plan covers a substantial percentage of the full-time workforce)
  • employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs)
  • worker cooperatives
  • 401(k) plans, stock bonus plans or profit sharing plans substantially invested in employer stock
  • similar plans that provide ownership incentives to a substantial percentage of a company's employees.

2. How Do I Submit an Entry?

Companies may self-nominate for the Innovations Award by completing an application, available on this Web page in November 2009. Companies may also be nominated by third parties, although the application must include permission from an authorized representative of the nominated company accepting the nomination.

3. Award Criteria

The Innovations in Employee Ownership Award is intended to recognize distinctive innovative practices in, or uses of, employee ownership that represent advances in this field.

To select the prize winners, including the grand prize winner, the Awards Committee will evaluate each nominee on each of the following criteria:
  • Value of the innovation in developing best practices in employee participation, entrepreneurship, plan design, ownership culture, communications, and/or employee education,
  • Value of the innovation in increasing the number of employee-ownership companies,
  • Value of the innovation in promoting awareness and positive public perception of employee ownership,
  • The ability of the innovation to be transferred or propagated, and
  • The quality of the documentation of the innovation's implementation and effects.

All Innovations Awards are general: there will not be a winner in each of the categories listed above, but all companies will be judged in a single pool to determine winners.

Anything the nominee has done or is doing is eligible for consideration, except activities for which the nominee has already won an Innovations Award. The Innovations Award is NOT limited to activities in the past year.

4. Prizes

In addition to the Innovations in Employee Ownership Award, which will be presented to a representative of the winning company at the NCEO/Beyster annual conference, one representative from each winning company will receive a complimentary conference registration.

All winners will receive prominent publicity, including the NCEO and BI websites, written materials from both organizations, and ready-to-use press-kits announcing their accomplishment. NCEO and BI will publicize the winning companies and facilitate dissemination of the ideas behind the winning entry so that the ideas can be spread as effectively as possible.

Do You Know the Next Winner of the Innovations Award?

If you know of an innovative company that should be recognized with an Innovations Award, take a few minutes to tell us about them. We'll give them a call and let them know that someone recommended them for an award: they will be flattered and you will have helped good ideas rise to the top for recognition.

Here's all we need to know:
  • The name of the company
  • A contact person
  • Contact information
  • Whether you want to remain anonymous
  • A brief description of why you think they are a good candidate (the judging criteria are above)

You can complete our online form or contact Loren Rodgers (LRodgers@nceo.org; 510-208-1307) directly.

Prior Year Winners

Grand Prize Winner: Cedarwood School

www.cedarwoodschool.com
Mandeville, Louisiana

Even the concept of Cedarwood School is innovative: "we've all heard of doctors' hospitals," says CEO and founder Kathy LeBlanc. "Why not a teacher-owned school?" Cedarwood has 375 students in preschool to seventh grade at its campus in southeastern Louisiana, and 32 faculty and staff members participate in an ESOP that owns 100% of the company. Through her experience with the ESOP, ownership has become central to LeBlanc's idea of what schools should be: "teachers make countless decisions that affect the quality of education-it only makes sense for them to take ownership, literally, of their own schools." At Cedarwood, ownership isn't only about shares and education isn't just about students. Faculty and staff receive extensive business literacy training and the board of directors held a "fishbowl" board meeting: an actual board meeting held on stage, with employee-owners watching the discussion and the decisions. The school weathered Hurricane Katrina thanks in part to the strength of its employee owners and the systems and governance structures created in connection with their ESOP.

ATA Engineering, Inc.

ata-e.com
San Diego, California

In April 2000, just after it spun off from its parent company, ATA Engineering's 28 founding employees, from the engineers to the receptionist, owned the company through a combination of direct ownership and options. Not content with that system, the company crafted a complex transaction involving recapitalization, cancellation of options, and issuance of new options. The results was an S corporation with 100% ESOP ownership and an active, broad-based options program. To preserve S corporation status, the company offers a commitment to buy back options before exercise at their "in the money" value. ATA's management is project-focused; the company president may find herself reporting to a project director with two years of tenure, so the company takes recruitment seriously. ATA hires new employee-owners only when a broad-based interview team reaches a consensus decision that they are "too good to pass up." To preserve the sense of a company-wide team, the compensation of every engineer, including the entire senior management team, is driven by a single formula. ATA does not have a separate executive compensation system.

HCSS

hcss.com
Houston, Texas

HCSS is a fast-growing, industry-leading software company that serves the construction industry. HCSS works hard to make sure that employees do their jobs with an awareness of how they influence success in the business. The result is fiercely loyal customers and employees who provide a level of service unique in their industry because they learn, act, and work with the passion of owners. That passion comes from extensive open-book management and business literacy training at HCSS University, and it also depends on a three-tier reward system that gives employees a wide-spectrum ownership interest. The short-term incentive is a cash bonus program. Stock appreciation rights (SARs) cover the medium-term, and the ESOP rounds out the picture. Recognizing the key role that management plays in nurturing an ownership culture, HCSS invested heavily in management training, with a 50 hour, 12 week course for managers representing over a quarter of the company's employees. Additionally, every employee participated in a two-day personal-development leadership course.