The Annual Conference Isn’t Just for ESOPs: Here’s Why You Should Attend
The NCEO Annual Conference brings together over 2,300 leaders in the employee ownership community. While ESOPs make up a significant portion of our attendee base, this year’s conference in Milwaukee (April 6-9) features 46 sessions relevant to non-ESOP employee-ownership structures—nearly a third of the entire program.
That’s 46 sessions focused on the universal challenges of employee ownership, such as building ownership cultures, navigating governance, managing growth, developing leaders and workforces, and more. The fundamentals are the same regardless of whether you are operating an EOT, building a worker cooperative, exploring direct employee ownership models, running an ESOP, or advising companies on these structures.
Registrations are selling quickly, and the full agenda is live, so if you’ve been on the fence, now’s the time to commit.
Five Tracks Applicable to Any Ownership Model
This year's agenda organizes sessions into seven tracks, and five of them offer sessions that broadly apply to any employee ownership model.
Culture and Engagement
This is the heart of employee ownership, regardless of your structure. How do you get employees to think and act like owners? You’ll find sessions on financial literacy, celebration, psychological safety, engaging younger employee-owners, and maintaining momentum year-round. There’s even a storytelling workshop specifically for employee-owners, in addition to sessions exploring how the stories we tell about ourselves and each other either build up or tear down the cultures we are trying to create.
Innovative Leadership
Leadership in an employee-owned company requires a different approach. These sessions cover high-involvement cultures, scenario planning, succession development, and leveraging operating systems like EOS and methodologies like the Great Game of Business and GRITT Business Coaching for strategic planning. Several sessions directly address EOT company experiences.
Workforce Development
Your people strategy is critical. Sessions cover AI adoption, leveraging employee ownership for recruitment in a competitive talent market, compensation design, job quality strategies, and performance management.
Effective Governance
Board governance looks different in employee-owned companies, and while there are key differences for ESOPs, EOTs, and cooperatives, some discussions will cover broader themes. These sessions dig into board development, fiduciary responsibilities, CEO succession planning, and the unique challenges of wearing multiple hats as directors and leaders.
Growth Strategies
How do you grow an employee-owned company without losing what makes it special? How do you tap into the growing acquisitions market as an EOT or worker cooperative? These sessions explore acquisitions, financing, holding company strategies, and scaling—specifically for employee-owned firms.
Learning Across Ownership Models
The employee ownership community is often tackling the same fundamental challenges regardless of structure: How do you build authentic ownership culture? How do you scale without losing your values? How do you find the right people to lead the next generation?
Different ownership structures offer different approaches to those questions. EOTs bring fresh perspectives on governance and profit sharing methodologies. Worker cooperatives have decades of experience with democratic decision-making. Direct ownership models offer insights on equity distribution. ESOPs have wrestled with scale and succession. When you put all of these experiences in conversation with each other, everyone learns.
You’ll walk away with practical strategies, peer connections across ownership models, and a clearer sense of what works (and what doesn't) in the day-to-day reality of operating an employee-owned company.
Getting the Most Out of Your Conference Experience
With over 120 sessions, you’ll have to make some tough decisions on which to attend. Browse the full agenda and map out your days in advance. Attend the peer network sessions that correspond with your role: board member, CEO, rising leader, or HR professional. (More info on all of our peer network programming can be found here.) And don’t skip the networking receptions, as some of the best conversations happen over drinks and appetizers with your peers.
It’s also worth noting that if you’re bringing a team of 3 or more, you’ll save $100 per person on registration!
We hope to see you in Milwaukee! Register here before the price increase on March 18, 2026.