Certified EO Blog
How Many Businesses Are There in America and What Does it Mean for Employee Ownership?
July 14, 2022
Building an employee-owned economy can create a more prosperous future. Employee-owners benefit from higher retirement savings and increased job security, while employee-owned companies anchor jobs in local communities. That future begins by increasing the number of employee-owners. Some companies start out as employee-owned, but the vast majority convert after operating for some time under a different ownership structure. Since launching Certified Employee-Owned in 2017, we have spoken to over 1,000 employee-owned companies. Fewer than 10 began as employee-owned. It’s difficult to generalize, but based on our experience we think that over 95% of employee-owned companies were created through conversion. The importance of conversion means that advocates of employee ownership need a good understanding of the broader business landscape. The best source on the size and number of American businesses is the Census Bureau’s Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB). In this article we will use the SUSB to analyze the business landscape and draw implications for the employee ownership community. Our key takeaways include: The number of companies large enough for employee ownership has been steadily rising since 2011 and now stands at just over 1.3 million. Most Americans work at large companies, but most US businesses are small. To drive a dramatic increase in the number of employee-owners, the employee ownership community needs a strategy for converting businesses with over 500 employees. Three sectors represent major opportunities for growing employee ownership: Health Care & Social Assistance; Accommodation & Food Service; Professional, and Scientific & Technical Services. Total Number of American Businesses According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there are 33.2 million American businesses in 2023, but there’s a catch. That number is skewed because it counts every single corporation, including those setup by independent contractors and even shell companies created solely to hold an asset. There’s no bright line between a legal corporation and what a normal person would consider a business, but a reasonable breakpoint might be having at least one paid employee. That is the line used by the SUSB, and in 2019 there were 6,102,412 businesses meeting this criterion. The concept of employee ownership only starts to have real meaning when a company includes multiple non-founder employees. While there are exceptions, most companies exploring employee ownership have at least 10 total employees. A company of this size will generally have the resources that enable conversion while also seeing benefits from a formal employee ownership structure. Using the SUSB’s size categories, we found that in 2019 there were 1,311,698 businesses with at least 10 employees. We estimate that there are roughly 6,000 employee-owned companies in America (our Directory provides an up-to-date list of all the ones we know about). That means that employee-owned companies are just 0.5% of the total number of companies with at least 10 employees. The chart above shows how the number of companies with at least 10 employees has changed since 1999. It dipped slightly at the turn of the millenium following the dotcom crash, increased steadily in the early 2000s before dipping again after 2006 and plunging after the 2008 financial crisis. After hitting a bottom of 1,173,373 in 2011, the number of companies with at least 10 employees has seen year-over-year increases every year through 2019. For the employee ownership community, it’s encouraging to see that the number of companies that are large enough to consider employee ownership has been steadily rising for almost a decade. Size Distribution Analyzing the SUSB size categories, we see that US businesses have a skewed distribution of size. While most firms are small, most people work at large employers. Roughly 30% of private-sector workers work at the 1,112 firms with over 10,000 employees, while the 4,790,714 businesses with fewer than 10 employees account for less than 10% of private sector employment. In other words, firms large enough to support an employee ownership program account for over 90% of the private-sector workforce. The skewed distribution of firm size presents a tradeoff for employee ownership advocates: do we focus on the number of companies that are employee-owned or the number of people working at employee-owned companies? If we are interested in maximizing the number of employee-owned firms, we’re going to have the most success focusing on small companies. But if we are interested in maximizing the total number of employee-owners, the emphasis should be on the big companies. This tradeoff is mirrored in the change in firms and employment from 1999 to 2019. The bulk of firm and employment growth was driven by large firms. Over this time period, the total number of firms with at least 10 employees increased 9% and employment at these companies increased 22%. Almost all of the increase in the number of firms was driven by companies with less than 500 employees, while 75% of the change in employment was driven by firms with 500 or more employees. The trend is clear: while there are more companies now than 20 years ago, the bulk of new private sector employment over the past two decades has been due to growth of larger firms. Industry Distribution Finally, we use the SUSB industry categroies to analyze changes in employment and total number of firms by industry. It’s worth noting that all categories here are based on the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) and that the SUSB excludes railroad employees, agricultural production employees, and most government employees. The following chart shows employment by Industry for 2019 for all firms with at least 10 employees. Below is a table with both employment and number of firms by industry. Note that the number of firms doesn’t align exactly with the previous section, likely because some firms operate in multiple industries. The four largest industries by employment - Healthcare & Social Assistance, Retail Trade, Accommodation & Food Services, and Admin, Support & Waste Management - are all part of the service sector. Manufacturing, once the backbone of the American economy, is now the fifth largest sector by employment. Construction and Professional, Scientific & Technical Services, and Other Services (excluding Public Admin) are notable for having a high number of firms of a smaller average size. Finally we look at how the number of firms and employment by industry have changed over the last two decades. This chart above shows the percent change from 1999 to 2019. Dramatic increases of over 50% employment occured in many service sectors including: Accommodation & Food Services; Educational Services; Health Care & Social Assistance; Arts, Entertainment & Recreation, Professional, and Scientific & Technical Services; and Admin, Support & Waste Management. Several industries show signs of consolidation with increasing employment and decreasing number of firms: Information; Finance & Insurance; Retail Trade; and Wholesale Trade. Finally, the dramatic decline in manufacturing can be seen in a 26% decrease in the number of firms and 28% decrease in total employment. Combining current firm size and employment with growth trends can help identify large and growing industries which would be good to target for the expansion of employee ownership. Based on the above charts, Health Care & Social Assistance; Accommodation & Food Service; and Professional, Scientific & Technical Services merit further investigation.
Read More ▶New Partnership: Certified Employee-Owned & The Healthcare Anchor Network
May 24, 2022
Certified Employee-Owned and The Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) are excited to announce a new partnership to help over 1,000 hospitals identify procurement opportunities with employee-owned companies! HAN is a nationally recognized collaboration of health systems leveraging their purchasing, hiring, and investing power to improve health and well-being by addressing economic and racial inequities in the communities they serve. HAN works to achieve a critical mass of health systems adopting the anchor mission, a proactive commitment to leverage their economic, political, and human capital to drive equitable, local economic impact. HAN was launched in May 2017 and today represents over 70 health systems with more than 1,000 hospitals, $75 billion of purchasing power, $150 billion of invested assets, and almost 2 million staff. HAN members include Boston Children’s Hospital, Cleveland Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, and University of California San Francisco. “We’re delighted to have the support of Certified Employee-Owned's knowledge of the field to help our members know the Certified Employee-Owned companies in their service areas and look for opportunities to do business with them,” stated David Zuckerman, President & Founder, Healthcare Anchor Network. Employee ownership is increasingly recognized as a way to reduce wealth inequality and strengthen local economies. By procuring products and services from employee-owned companies, anchor institutions will create good jobs while benefiting from increased service quality. To date, the main challenge preventing anchors from accessing this win-win opportunity has been the difficulty of finding employee-owned companies. As the only national certification focused on employee-owned companies, Certified Employee-Owned is perfectly positioned to help anchor institutions find employee-owned suppliers. Our standards of significant and broad-based employee ownership span all types of employee-owned companies including Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), Worker Cooperatives, Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs), Equity Compensation Plans, and more. Since our launch in September 2017, we have been working to build a list of verified employee-owned companies as well as tools to help people explore employee ownership, for example our Directory of Employee-Owned Companies. This partnership represents the first step to creating widespread purchasing preferences for employee-owned companies. The initial focus with HAN will be on helping their health systems identify current vendors who are employee-owned and educating HAN members on the benefits of doing business with employee-owned companies. Some health systems may be interested in taking the next step of integrating employee ownership into their process for identifying future vendors and filling open contracts. The experience and success stories from this partnership will help us build toward future purchasing engagements and could provide the proof-of-concept required for state or even federal purchasing preferences for employee-owned companies. To learn more about how we are working with HAN to promote purchasing from employee-owned companies, register for our upcoming webinar on July 21st.
Read More ▶Capital Accounts and Profit Sharing: The Two Ways Employee-Owners Build Wealth
April 27, 2022
Employee-owned companies can build life-changing wealth for working people. Take WinCo Foods. After roughly 40 years as an ESOP, the 130 workers at a single store in Corvallis, Oregon had a combined $100M in ownership wealth and across the company, over 400 front-line employees were “millionaire grocery clerks.” Or consider Springfield Remanufacturing Company (SRC). From 1983 through 2017, the company paid nearly $100M in distributions to its employee-owners. CEO Jack Stack highlights one person who, “started here in 1983 making $7.50 an hour [and] has now got $1.2 million.”While not every employee-owner will become a millionaire, research shows that these remarkable examples highlight broader trends. A 2018 study of S Corporation ESOPs found that employee-owners have nearly double the average retirement wealth of non-employee-owners ($170,326 versus $80,339). In 2021 we used data from the Federal Reserve to show that if every American business became employee-owned, wealth inequality would be reduced to historic lows and the wealth of the median household would increase by over $100,000.How are employee-owned companies helping people build this much wealth? While there are many ways to create and run an employee-owned company, there are only two ways that these businesses put money in the pockets of their workers: capital accounts and profit sharing. Capital AccountsCapital accounts are distinct accounts hold company stock directly or derivatives such as stock options on behalf of individual employees. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), Employee Stock Purchase Plans (ESPPs), and stock options are all forms of capital accounts. Capital accounts are typically funded through an initial grant or annual contributions. Funding might come from the company, as with an ESOP, or from the employee-owner, as with an ESPP. Today there are over 5,800 employee-owned companies using capital accounts. Capital accounts benefit from compound growth.The value of the stock or derivative in a capital account is tied to the performance of the company through the share price. Assuming the business is performing well, the company’s share price will increase and the value of the capital account will go up. Importantly, the increase in value from share price growth applies both to contributions as well as prior share price growth, which creates compound growth.Compound growth is how employee-owners can build life-changing wealth. Specifics vary, but many reasonable scenarios that reflect real-world practice lead to six-figure wealth building, and, as we saw with WinCo and SRC, companies that are employee-owned for 25+ years usually have front-line millionaires. While compound growth has tremendous potential, the key ingredient is time. Drawing the account down will erase the compounding. Building substantial wealth typically requires the capital account is untouched for 20 years or more. Eventually employee-owners must turn their capital account back into cash. Because employee-owned companies are private, there are generally two options: the company buys the share back or the accounts are cashed out when the company is sold. Due to the nature of business valuation, companies almost never have enough cash on hand to buy back all outstanding shares. This leads to a situation at mature capital account companies called “share recycling” where shares are bought from selling owners and recycled back to new owners. This is a time-tested practice that can continue for a long time if both the employee ownership plan and the company are managed well. Profit SharingProfit sharing is when a company regularly distributes some portion of profits back to employees as cash. The key feature of profit sharing is liquidity. Profit sharing is typically done on a quarterly or annual basis, and once the profits are in and the benefit is calculated a check is cut to qualifying employee-owners within a few weeks.Profit sharing can be implemented in a variety of ways, but not all forms of profit sharing are ownership. For example, a plan that exists solely at the discretion of management can provide a nice benefit, but it is not ownership because it can be taken away by management without any sort of monetary compensation to the employees. To be considered ownership a profit sharing plan must have a legal claim on part or all of the business and it must have codified distribution rules that are broad-based. Profit-sharing benefit plans that own shares of company stock can meet these criteria, but in our experience these plans rarely own enough of the company for it to meet the definition of employee-owned. Currently we see just two types of employee-owned companies where the primary wealth building mechanism is profit sharing: Worker Cooperatives and Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs). We know of roughly 400 companies operating through these two vehicles today.Tradeoffs Between Capital Accounts and Profit SharingThe structure of capital accounts and profit sharing leads to a fundamental tradeoff between wealth building and liquidity. Wealth BuildingThrough compounding, capital accounts help employee-owners build more wealth than profit sharing. Specifics vary, but typically after 30 years compound growth is responsible for at least 80% of the value of a capital account (explore scenarios here). If the account owner had instead received their annual allocations of stock as cash payments, for example through profit sharing, they would have received just one fifth of the value of the capital account over time. I doubt that any employee-owner has ever built a million dollars in wealth through profit sharing alone.Liquidity (Timing of Payments)While capital accounts have greater wealth-building potential, profit sharing provides money sooner, and money today is more useful than money later. Most capital account structures at employee-owned companies own illiquid private-company stock, so employee-owners have limited withdrawal options. On top of that, regularly withdrawing a portion of your capital account will diminish or even completely offset the benefits of compounding. Delayed gratification is inherent in the concept of capital accounts just as liquidity is inherent in the concept of profit sharing. The ultimate point of employee ownership is to create better lives for working people and if people have immediate needs, waiting might not be an option. While profit sharing builds less total wealth, it provides greater liquidity and that tradeoff might be worth it for some people, especially those making a lower income. Investing in GrowthThe differences between profit sharing and capital accounts have implications for how a company invests in growth. Capital accounts are fundamentally long-term and therefore can be much better for alignment. Theoretically, profit sharing can disincentivize investing in the business, since investments reduce profit now in exchange for profit later. For example, buying an expensive piece of equipment that would increase profitability multiple years in the future. If employee-owners have a strong need for money now, will they still make that investment?Why Not Both?Considering the advantages of both capital accounts and profit sharing it’s tempting to ask: why not do both? In theory you could split the ownership of a company in any way between capital accounts and profit sharing. In practice, we find that companies tend to do one or the other. We haven’t counted exactly, but I would estimate that over 95% of employee-owned companies either have capital accounts or they are owned 100% by an EOT or Worker Cooperative.There is a major exception: discretionary profit sharing. While not actually ownership, profit sharing that exists at the discretion of management shares the positive characteristics described above, specifically the immediacy of payment and the attendant culture-building benefits. For this reason, we see many companies with capital accounts implement a discretionary profit sharing plan as well. Typically it has a quarterly or annual cadence and the primary focus is to strengthen the connection between the success of the company and the success of the employee-owner. Wealth building for working people is the common thread running through all corners of the employee ownership community. Different companies in different industries employing different people will all find their own balance in the tradeoff between capital accounts and profit sharing. What’s important is to consider what’s right for your company and your people.This article was originally posted 4/27/22 and was updated on 5/9/2023. Special thanks to Jon Shell of Social Capital Partners who read an early version of this post and suggested the point about “Investing in Growth”. That section is adapted from his email. -----------------After publication, Christopher Mackin of Ownership Associates sent a thoughtful reply detailing a notable example of a non-US company that uses both profit sharing and capital accounts, as well as a template for implementing a dual structure. With permission, I am including the content of the message here for interested readers."Your statement that worker cooperatives and EOT's are where profit sharing employee ownership models reside is a bit problematic. You are factually correct about EOT's and most American worker cooperatives. But it is also the case that perhaps the most prominent single example of what you are calling Capital Accounts is in the Mondragon worker cooperative system of - yes - internal capital accounts. David Ellerman and the rest of us at the Industrial Cooperative Association worked hard in the 1970's and 1980's to develop model by laws for worker cooperatives (pps.16-20) that specify how to establish that internal capital account model which David thought through independently of Mondragon. When we traveled there in the late 1970's we were amazed to find a real world example of scale that made use of the very same ideas - a membership share of stock the price of which was set and adjusted only for inflation separated from individual internal capital accounts into which annual profits were contributed and losses deducted. These same accounts obviously also compound wealth.It is my guess that only a small percentage (say 10%?) of American worker cooperatives make use of the internal capital account system used in Mondragon. That is or will become a problem for them when the pressure to pay out cash is perceived to be a zero-sum decision on the part of members (cash for persons or undifferentiated investment in the cooperative). The internal capital account system breaks through that problem and does so in a way that is actually superior in my mind to the ESOP structure which has the benefit of capital accounts but the pressure to value those accounts using net present value methodologies."
Read More ▶Defining “Employee-Owned”: How We Set Our Certification Standards
March 21, 2022
At Certified Employee-Owned, our mission is to accelerate the creation of an employee-owned economy by building support for employee ownership. Inspired by Fair Trade and Great Place to Work, Kramer Sharp and I started Certified EO in 2016 because we thought certification would coordinate and amplify the voice of the employee ownership movement. As we have grown to over 500 Members, we have seen how employee ownership is an idea that takes many different forms at different companies. Given all the nuance, it’s important to articulate what it means to certify a company as “employee-owned” and how we set this standard. This article walks through our journey to create a specific and clear definition of employee-owned and details what we learned along the way:Why it’s important to define “employee-owned”Themes from over 250 community conversationsWealth building unites our communitySetting a standard that people know and trustWhy it’s Important to Define “Employee-Owned”The idea for Certified EO grew out of my work as a PhD student at Stanford Business School. I joined the Organizational Behavior department in 2013 with an interest in understanding alternative business structures. In my first year, my advisor pointed me in the direction of the academic work on employee-owned companies. I was excited to learn about the model and thrilled that research demonstrated the potential for increased firm performance and better outcomes for employees. While absorbing this work, I had frequent conversations about what I was learning with a long-time friend, Kramer Sharp. The more we talked about employee ownership the more interested we became in this unique business model. We were delighted to find that many companies we knew and loved were employee-owned. We were also inspired by the passionate service providers powering this transformative model. But we kept coming back to the same question: Why had we never heard of this before?Reflecting on our experience, it became clear that a major obstacle for the employee ownership community was lack of visibility. Finding employee-owned companies was a challenge. Some employee-owned companies were talking about it, but many were not. Worse, some companies were saying they were employee-owned when clearly they were not. There was no official list and the closest thing we could find required digging through government fillings. But even that list was incomplete. There simply was no easy way to find employee-owned companies.Kramer and I began thinking about ways to create a bridge between employee-owned companies and the general public. Looking at Fair Trade and Great Place to Work, we realized that certification is a proven model for coordinating and amplifying the voice of a movement. Combining the reach of employee-owned companies would make them the employer of choice for millions of job seekers and make being employee-owned a major differentiator with clients and consumers. But creating a certification program means creating a standard that people know and trust. So before we could start building towards our vision we had to define “employee-owned.”Themes From Over 250 Community ConversationsAt this time, the ESOP model was already over 40 years old. Kramer and I knew that we had to ground the definition of “employee-owned” in the practices and views of the community. We started by connecting with the major trade associations including the National Center for Employee Ownership, The ESOP Association, Employee-Owned S-Corporations of America, and the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. We attended conferences to speak with service providers including lawyers, accountants, bankers, and consultants who create and administer employee ownership plans. And of course we contacted as many employee-owned companies as possible. Over the course of 2016 we had over 250 conversations about what it means to be employee-owned. It’s no surprise that we heard a variety of perspectives. For some companies employee ownership is about giving everyone a financial stake in the success of the business. WinCo Foods, for example, has had broad-based employee ownership for over 30 years and in the process has created millionaire grocery clerks. Other companies see employee ownership as encompassing both share ownership and employee involvement in operational decision making, for example open-book management. A few companies even see employee ownership as including a say in important governance issues. For example, Worker Cooperatives give their worker-owners equal votes in electing the board of directors. These three aspects of ownership - money, operational decision making and governance - were the common threads running through our conversations with companies and advocates. Wealth Building Unites Our CommunityIt took about five conversations for us to see that it would be impossible to come up with a single definition that would include everything that everyone saw as important. While money, operational decision making, and governance were the common threads, everyone had a different opinion on their relative importance. So we started looking for a baseline. What were the aspects of employee ownership that would be broadly seen as essential? If a company did everything BUT one particular practice, would they still be viewed as employee-owned? With this shift in perspective, one element stood out: wealth building for working people. Everyone we spoke to mentioned wealth building as a critical aspect of employee ownership. We heard many stories of long-time employee-owners in front-line roles building substantial wealth. Companies with diverse employee ownership structures including Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), Worker Cooperatives, Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs), and the various Direct Share Ownership Models all include some combination of profit sharing and capital accounts that help employees build wealth. Others pointed out how broad-based wealth building aligns with the fundamental promise of America as a land of opportunity. While operational decision making and employee involvement in governance can be positive, the wealth building for working people stands apart in importance for individuals as well as our country. Setting a Standard That People Know and TrustWith our direction focused on wealth building, we arrived at a set of standards that captured the common practices and was aligned with historical legislation:Ownership: at least 30% of the company must be owned by employees. Shares held by company founders do not count towards this threshold.Access: reasonable access to ownership must be open to every employee.Concentration: the ownership held in line with #1 and #2 must not be over-concentrated. This is controlled either through a cap on the maximum distribution or a maximum ratio between maximum and median distribution.It’s important to acknowledge that some things get lost when you simplify a complicated concept like employee ownership down to a binary of certified or not. For example, we’ve spoken with a company where employees hold a 10% stake that meets the access and concentration components of our standards. They were quick to point out that it might be much better to own 10% of a successful company than 100% of a failing business. There is merit to that point, but at the same time, 10% is not enough to call a company “employee-owned.” Others have told us that they felt our standards were too low. Why not set the bar at a majority ownership stake? There are a few strategic reasons for an employee-owned company to keep ownership below 50%, for example maintaining government purchasing preferences. The 30% threshold is also aligned with historical legislation, for example Section 1042 of the Internal Revenue Code. Our research shows that if every business became 30% employee-owned, wealth inequality would decrease to historic lows and the wealth of the median household would increase nearly four times. While 30% might sound low to some, it’s a very high bar. According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are roughly 1.3 million firms in America with at least 10 employees. We estimate there are approximately 6,000 companies that meet our certification standards. That means fewer than 1 in 200 businesses met our definition of employee-owned - less than half of one percent! Ultimately the goal of Certified Employee-Owned is to accelerate the creation of an employee-owned economy. Creating a standard that people know and trust is a means to an end. What matters most is that our standard is clear, easy to understand, and applied consistently so that it creates a bridge between the companies and the community. Uniting our voices through certification will help millions of Americans see the value of this model, create a resource that benefits our community, and increase the number of employee-owned companies. There has never been a more important time to build an employee-owned economy, and we’re thrilled that we can do our part through certification.This article was originally posted 3/21/22. It was updated on 1/5/2023.
Read More ▶The Difference Between “ESOP” and “Employee-Owned”
February 16, 2022
If you’ve spent time learning about employee ownership, then you’ve certainly heard of Employee Stock Ownership Plans, or ESOPs. In fact, ESOPs are so common among employee-owned companies that many people use these terms interchangeably. You might be surprised to learn that, while ESOPs are certainly the most common type of employee-owned company, there is actually quite a bit of daylight between the two concepts. Not all ESOPs are employee-owned, and not all employee-owned companies have an ESOP. This article walks through the differences between “ESOP” and “employee-owned” including: Quick Background on ESOPs Not all ESOPs are Employee-Owned Many Employee-Owned Companies Don’t Have an ESOP Defining “Employee-Owned” Stronger Together Through Certification Quick Background on ESOPs ESOPs have grown dramatically since their creation in 1974 as part of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). According to the Department of Labor, there are currently around 6,300 companies with an ESOP. They range in size from dozens of employees to hundreds of thousands and operate in every industry imaginable. The ESOP’s popularity is due to a number of factors, including nearly 50 years of proven success, strong tax benefits, and a fantastic community of advocates and service providers. By law, ESOPs are extremely inclusive. The basic idea behind an ESOP is that it is a trust that owns company stock on behalf of a broad-based group of employees. Shares are usually allocated to eligible employees annually, and the eligibility criteria employees must meet to receive a share allocation are very open. Typically employees need to work 1,000 hours in a year to participate, an average of only 20 hours per week. Additionally, ESOP shares are paid out of company profits and are allocated to employees at no cost. These open criteria drive high participation and ensure that workers at ESOP companies benefit when their employer is successful. Not all ESOPs are Employee-Owned While all ESOPs are broad-based, the percentage of total outstanding stock owned by the ESOP varies dramatically from company to company. There is no minimum, and in practice we’ve seen this range anywhere from a fraction of a percent to 100%. Of course, an ESOP that owns even just a tiny piece of a large and successful company can provide a great benefit to employees, especially since employees are not paying for the shares out of their wages. But there is a categorical distinction between a company operating a small broad-based, share-ownership plan as a benefit and a company where the employees own a substantial portion of the stock, perhaps even 100%. In other words, there is a difference between having an ESOP and being employee-owned. Further clarity can be gained by looking at a specific example. In the publicly available Form 5500 data, the largest company indicating they have an ESOP is Walmart. To be sure, that ESOP must be a nice benefit for some of the company's employees. However, it probably is not having the same impact as the ESOP at 100% employee-owned WinCo Foods, which has made many front line employees into millionaires. WinCo is just one of many inspiring stories of employee-owners building life-changing wealth. That’s why it’s important to remember that having an ESOPs doesn't always mean a company is employee-owned. Many Employee-Owned Companies Don’t Have an ESOP While the ESOP model is the most popular and successful structure used by employee-owned companies, it is not the only option. There are a number of alternative ways to implement significant and broad-based employee ownership, including Worker Cooperatives, Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs), Employee Stock Purchase Plans (ESPPs), and equity compensation plans like stock options. Companies can even implement employee ownership through direct share ownership, though there are often benefits to using a more formal structure. Alternative structures play an important role in building an employee-owned economy because not every company is a good fit for an ESOP. Some selling owners want more flexibility. Others might want to ensure employees have a strong voice in governance. But perhaps the most promising use case for alternative structures is helping smaller companies become employee-owned. The setup and administrative costs of an ESOP can be prohibitive for companies under 40 people. In recent years we’ve seen a growing number of small companies using EOTs, direct share ownership, and even stock options. This encouraging trend could greatly expand the employee ownership community. Defining “Employee-Owned” If not all ESOPs are employee-owned and many employee-owned companies don’t have an ESOP, then it begs the question: How do you define employee-owned? Answering this question was priority number one when we started Certified Employee-Owned. Our vision from the very beginning has been to use certification to accelerate the creation of an employee-owned economy. Programs like Great Place to Work and Fair Trade show that certification builds support by amplifying the voice of the movement. We quickly realized that, while companies with different employee ownership structures have distinct administrative and legal concerns, they would all benefit from the visibility created by certification. With this big-tent vision in mind, we set out to create a definition of “employee-owned” that could be applied to any ownership structure. We searched extensively for historical precedent and had over 250 conversations with companies and advocates. Ultimately, we identified financial ownership as the common thread running through legislation and views of advocates from across the space. With that in mind, we focused our definition on three concepts: Ownership: At least 30% of the company must be owned by employees (excluding founders) Access: Reasonable access to ownership must be open to every employee Concentration: Ownership among employees cannot be too concentrated Stronger Together Through Certification It’s important to emphasize that the point of this definition is not to determine who is a “good” or “bad” company. Ultimately we are focused on what certification can accomplish for the employee ownership community and a necessary part of any certification program is a specific and clear delineation between who does and does not meet the standards. Setting a standard people know and trust has intrinsic value, but it also enables the creation of shared resources. Our Directory of Employee-Owned Companies is an up-to-date list of every company we know of that, to the best of our knowledge, meets the above definition of employee-owned. The directory create a simple way for people to find employee-owned companies, but it’s only possible with a clear definition of employee-owned. Our certification mark is the strongest way for a company to communicate that they meet high standards of significant and broad-based employee ownership. Over one hundred Members are using the mark on their websites and major companies like WinCo Foods and Litehouse are using the mark on widely circulated products and packaging. The foundation of this branding initiative is the trust created by third-party certification. Certification is changing the game for the entire employee ownership community, including ESOPs, and that’s why it’s important to understand the difference between “ESOP” and “employee-owned”. This article was originally posted 2/16/22 and was updated on 3/28/2023.
Read More ▶10 Reasons Business Owners Have Transitioned to Employee Ownership
January 20, 2022
Since launching Certified Employee-Owned in 2017, I’ve spoken to over 1,000 employee-owned companies. These conversations are the highlight of my day. I love hearing stories about entrepreneurs starting companies and I'm always curious to learn how founders have come across employee ownership. Spending so much time talking to entrepreneurs and leaders in the employee ownership space has shown me a few interesting trends. Most notably, the vast majority of companies I have spoken with did not start out as employee-owned, but transitioned after many years in business. I haven’t kept exact numbers, but I would estimate this is the case with over 95% of the companies I know. While there are as many reasons for conversion as there are founders, there are a few trends that stick out. Here are 10 reasons that stand out as to why business owners have made the transition to employee ownership, along with a paraphrased story for each one that captures the essence of the journey: 1. Keeping it in the family“ Starting this company was my dad’s greatest accomplishment and growing the business has been my life’s work. But none of my kids were interested in taking the reins. I know what can happen when a company is taken over by a strategic or private equity and I didn’t have the heart to do that to people I’ve known my entire life. Transitioning to 100% employee-owned was my way of keeping the company in the family.” 2. Giving our owners partial liquidity“ To me going 30% employee-owned was a no-brainer. I got some liquidity, and now my people have a direct stake in the action, so the company is doing even better. As a bonus I have a built in succession plan. I don’t have any plans to step back, but you never know what will happen and it’s great to have that option.” 3. Continuity through succession“ This company was her baby, she wasn't going to sell it. She really liked the idea of leaving the company in the hands of the employees, because the alternative was going the way of other companies that she had seen bought out and changed completely.” 4. Staying an anchor in our community “Our founder was deeply concerned with what would happen to the local economy. He knew that if he sold to a strategic buyer, they would move the headquarters and maybe even the factory. We’re the biggest employer in the area so that would have devastated the town. By transitioning to EO our founder kept us local and kept the town alive.” 5. Start-up business sharing equity “A lot of start-ups share equity with talented employees in exchange for under-market wages, but my vision for sharing equity in the company was different. I wanted all my dedicated employees to have skin in the game from the beginning. The set formulas for sharing equity with only early employees didn’t work for me.” 6. Aligning employees at a time of growth “After years of start-up hustle, we were finally poised to take our company to the next level, and employees were going to be critical to our growth. We wanted to align the interests of owners and employees by giving employees a stake and a better understanding of what makes our company tick.” 7. Finding alternatives to private equity“ Private equity started knocking at our door and it made us think critically about the future of our company. We believe in our mission, our people, and the services we provide and are not willing to compromise those to get the highest dollar. Some of our shareholders were pressuring us for liquidity, and we needed to figure out how to provide that without overburdening the company with debt.” 8. Mission-driven at our core “We have been mission-first since day one. I started the business to help us transition to a sustainable future. Growing the company and making money has always been an outcome of our success, not a goal. I transitioned us to employee-owned to lock that mission-focus into our DNA. I want everyone here to have a stake in our future and to feel as bought-in as I feel as the founder.” 9. Feeling alone at the top “I did not expect to become a solo entrepreneur running a company by myself. I always wanted to do this as a team. I don’t have a co-founder anymore, and I want everyone to be more bought in and engaged as co-owners of this business.” 10. Democracy at work“ We wanted to be a worker cooperative from the start. It is the only corporate structure that aligns with our values - that each worker should have equal say in the governance of the company. We are in this together and that should be reflected in every aspect of our structure and culture. ”Are you a business owner looking to learn more about employee ownership? A great place to start is our overview.
Read More ▶11 of the 100 Largest Private Companies in America are Employee-Owned
April 13, 2021
Forbes curates a number of interesting lists, among them a list of the largest private companies in America [https://www.forbes.com/largest-private-companies/list/]. Today I was looking through this list and thought: how many of these companies are employee-owned? Using our new Directory [https://www.certifiedeo.com/companies], I found that 11 of the 100 largest private companies on the Forbes list are likely to be employee-owned. Two of them are Certified EO Members: * #23 Wawa * #53 WinCo Foods Nine others have a broad-based ownership program that, to the best of our knowledge, owns at least 30% of the company: * #5 Publix Super Markets * #55 Graybar Electric * #73 Sammons Enterprises * #74 Hensel Phelps Construction * #86 Schreiber Foods * #94 McCarthy Holdings * #96 Swinerton * #97 Kehe Distributors The fact that over 10% of the largest private companies in America are employee-owned is a powerful proof point that employee ownership works! The question for those of us that want to see employee ownership grow is: what would it take to get this number from 11 to 50?
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