New NCEO Report Details Recruitment and Retention Strategies Among ESOPs
All businesses face challenges in recruiting and retaining employees; however, there are very few sources focused solely on how ESOPs deal with these issues and how they use employee ownership specifically as leverage.
We collected data from 433 privately-held ESOPs from March–April 2026 using a comprehensive survey designed to provide actionable insights from other ESOPs like them.
The full report includes:
- How often they communicate about the ESOP and the themes they focus on most.
- The recruitment methods, such as job boards, they find most useful.
- The specific strategies, beyond salary and benefits, they are using and finding effective in recruitment.
- The formal retention programs they are using and which specific retention strategies they use and find effective.
- What specific benefits they are offering beyond conventional offerings.
- What types of flexible work arrangements they are offering and to whom on staff.
Further, the report breaks out these questions by key demographics categories and for the largest industry categories to allow for comparisons.
- Revenue: 4 categories
- Number of employees: 3 categories
- Percent ESOP ownership: 2 categories
- Age of ESOP: 3 categories
- Median age of workers: 3 categories
- Construction
- Manufacturing
- Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
The 98-page report is available for purchase here: https://www.nceo.org/research/data/retention-and-recruitment-survey.
All the respondents received this full report as a thank-you for completing the survey.
Reach out to me with any questions at nwiefek@nceo.org.