%20and%20random%20gaps%2c%20with%20a%20scattering%20of%20small%20black%20dots%2c%20on%20dark%20blue%20background%2c%20for%20tiled%20art%20deco%20effect.jpeg?width=1000&height=682&name=Multicolored%20geometric%20mosaic%20of%20solid%20squares%20(some%20with%20dividers)%20and%20random%20gaps%2c%20with%20a%20scattering%20of%20small%20black%20dots%2c%20on%20dark%20blue%20background%2c%20for%20tiled%20art%20deco%20effect.jpeg)
Welcome to the employee ownership community! You’re joining a national network of successful employee-owned businesses spanning diverse industries across the United States.
The resources below are designed to guide you as you continue your employee ownership journey with your new ESOP.
Culture and communication
- Articles on ESOP basics to share with your new employee owners
- The ESOP participant’s guide to distribution rules
- Publication: The ESOP Communications Sourcebook
- The Ownership Culture Survey
ESOP rollout
Read
- Things to Do in Your First Year as an ESOP
- This NCEO Newsletter article sets out some priorities for your first year as an ESOP, supplemented with some of our other resources for continued, in-depth education.
- Setting up a communications committee and an ideas team. Although every company is different, most successful ESOP companies have a communications committee, and setting one up can be part of a rollout or support the next steps immediately after a rollout. Setting up an ideas team to structure ways that employees can identify problems and create new ideas also is a really useful step. There are lots of ways to learn about communications committees, but you might want to see a sample committee charter or dive into our book the ESOP Communications Committee Guide. For information on ideas teams and other ways to create a high-involvement culture, see Beyond Engagement: How to Make Your Business an Idea Factory.
- It is tempting to focus on ESOPs as a great retirement benefit, but your employees are not likely to be focused on that. The most important thing to communicate to employees at the outset is being sold to an ESOP means they were not sold to someone else. Ask people to take a minute and envision what would happen if you were. What would that look like? What would your culture be like? Would some people lose their jobs? See our article on this, Communicating the Now of Employee Ownership.
Attend
- Communications Committee Crash Course
- EO Summit (with the Ohio Employee Ownership Center)
- Annual Conference and Fall Forum
Support
- Other employee owned companies can help make your rollout work. The NCEO can connect you with a peer who can give you tips on your own rollout, and if you’d like a guest speaker, we can help you identify good prospects from other companies or from the NCEO.
- The employee ownership community also has professional advisers who focus on effective communications and education specifically for ESOP companies. Our Service Provider Directory can help you find them.
- Giving people a book to take away with them will help answer some questions that they may not think about during the rollout itself. Employee Ownership: Building a Better American Economy is a broad overview intended to do just that.
- Credible research results can give people confidence about employee ownership and a sense that your company is joining a large and successful community of businesses. Take a look through our page ESOPs and employment: the data for infographics, state-by-state overviews, and more.
HR/compensation
- Publication: Executive and Director Compensation in ESOP Companies
- Publication: Sustainable ESOPs
- Training: Online ESOP Training
For business owners
For decision-makers
- Data: 2021 corporate governance survey
- Data: 2022 executive compensation report
- Toolkit: The Board Excellence Toolkit and Candidate Directory
- Webinar replay: Effective Corporate Governance in ESOP Companies
- Publication: The Inside ESOP Fiduciary Handbook
Popular NCEO resources
- The Employee Ownership Blog – keep up to date with news in the employee ownership community
- Our Service Provider Directory links our members to advisors, consultants, TPAs, and other service providers to help with the employee ownership process
- The Innovative Communication Coalition and the ESOP Finance Working Group – meet your peers at other employee-owned companies to exchange ideas, problem solve, and learn from each other. We have similar groups for CEOs.
You can also explore key findings from our most recent research about how employee ownership affects firms and workers, and head to ownershipeconomy.org to see how employee ownership has great potential to stabilize employment, to root productive capital in communities, and to increase the assets and incomes of working families.