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How ESOP Companies Can Connect with Gen Z Talent

Young workers bring fresh energy, high expectations, and a strong desire for purpose to the workplace. In a recent NCEO Community Conversation, four panelists from varying perspectives explored one question: what helps employee-owned companies recruit and retain people early in their careers? The panel featured Laura Isaacs, ESOP administrator at Rosendin; Liza Shifrin, NCEO senior researcher and data analyst; Andrew Skidmore of Four Creeks, who offered the view of a younger employee-owner; and moderator Tim Garbinsky, director of partnerships at the NCEO.

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Corey Rosen

This EO Month, Gamify Your Business Literacy Initiatives

Teaching employees to understand business is an important part of ownership culture. One way to do this is through business games. This member-exclusive article explores how Renée Mundell of ESOP-owned Radian Research worked with artificial intelligence to come up with this business game. The documents describe how the game works and include a scoring sheet. The basic idea of the game is to present a business scenario and then let employees choose between four different ways to spend money, including growth, employee bonuses and compensation, infrastructure, and paying down debt. The game is played in multiple rounds with a dedicated metric to keep score of the effectiveness of each employee's investment decision. The employee gets a positive or negative score to carry on to the next round based on the prior round's decision.

Even if you choose not to use this game, the approach Renée uses here may give you ideas on how to create your own game.

The game documents include a more detailed description of the game, the scenario, and score sheets. They are available to NCEO members in our document library's section on ESOP communications.

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Corey Rosen

Why Selling to an ESOP Often Provides the Highest Financial Benefits

Most owners who sell to an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) are focused more on legacy and values than price. They have spent much of their lives building a great business and want to see the people who have helped build it carry it forward. Other owners, however, want to consider all their options and may be concerned that selling to an ESOP means giving up significant value. They may have heard that selling to an ESOP means giving up some of what they could get by selling to another buyer. A new NCEO paper coauthored by NCEO founder Corey Rosen and by Regina Carls and Eric Zaiman of J.P. Morgan, How Proceeds from ESOP Sales Compare to Those from Other Buyers (PDF; also see the embedded version below), shows that selling to an ESOP can often match or exceed the financial benefits from selling to another buyer.

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Corey Rosen

Second Annual Stout ESOP Index Shows Large ESOP Companies Continue to Outperform the Market

In the only study of its kind, the Stout ESOP Index, the global advisory firm Stout found that between 2021 and 2025, the average annual share price growth in its index of private ESOP companies substantially outperformed the S&P 500 index and the broader Russell 2000 index. The study was originally released in late 2025, covering 2021 through 2024, and has now been released in its second annual version, covering 2021 through 2025. 

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Nancy Wiefek

New Research from Rutgers Shows an Advantage for Blue-Collar ESOP Workers

A new study from the Rutgers University Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing on behalf of Employee-Owned S Corporations of America (ESCA) finds that workers without bachelor's degrees who report working in jobs with employee stock ownership plans have higher earnings, greater access to employer-provided benefits, and higher household wealth than workers in non-ESOP jobs. You can read the full report here.

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Timothy Garbinsky

Employee Ownership Made Retirement Real for This Employee-Owner

We at the NCEO love to lift up the voices of working people whose lives have been transformed by the power of employee ownership. In celebration of Labor Day earlier this month, we received a piece from employee-owner Jaime Garcia of ESOP-owned Santini Foods in San Lorenzo, California, courtesy of the nonprofit Expanding ESOPs.

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Corey Rosen

Report on NCEO's Task Force on ESOP Valuation and the Repurchase Obligation

The NCEO recently convened a task force of trustees to issue a report on the current situation regarding valuation and the ESOP repurchase obligation. We have now released the Report of the NCEO Task Force on ESOP Valuation and the Repurchase Obligation (PDF; also see the embedded version below), which discusses the basic problem, governing authority, common approaches, ESOP valuation basics, specific issues, and recommendations for companies.

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