Blue Ridge ESOP Associates Industry News

Your annual ESOP statement gives you a terrific opportunity to make the most of employee ownership. Seize it by implementing these seven practical suggestions to increase understanding of your ESOP, strengthen your company’s culture, and promote employee ownership as a powerful tool for improved performance and employee retention.

Blue Ridge ESOP Associates was proud to be represented again at the Mid-Year Fellows Workshop in Honor of Louis O. Kelso in January. This workshop was organized by Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing of the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations. The program is named after Louis Kelso who was a political economist, corporate and financial lawyer, author, and merchant banker. He is widely credited as the inventor and pioneer of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), enabling workers without savings to own stock in their employer company. The purpose of the annual workshop is to study broad-based forms of capital ownership and capital income such as employee stock ownership, equity compensation, profit sharing, gain sharing, and worker cooperatives in the corporation.  The workshop also explores approaches to broadened citizen capital ownership, “second income”, and dividend funds for citizens in the society in the United States.  The workshop provides an opportunity for scholars to present research in progress, receive mutual mentoring and feedback, work on joint research projects and publications, and meet foundation officials and publishers interested in this scholarship.  The workshop convenes members of the research Fellowship Program of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing from around the globe.

Should Twitter be bought out by its employees and customers? Joseph Blasi and Doug Kruse show why employee ownership could be a smart move for this tech company in this article.

Tom Roback will be co-presenting at the Exit Planning Institute's monthly meeting in Tyson's Corner on April 19. This meeting will review the different options available in transitioning the ownership of a company. For more information and to register for this meeting click here.

North Carolina has the potential to turn a grave challenge into a transformative economic opportunity. Thousands of businesses could disappear over the coming years as baby boomer entrepreneurs enter retirement, threatening to deal a heavy blow to communities across the state. However, by helping many of these firms convert into employee-owned companies, we can keep their doors open, give workers an ownership stake into their economic future, and buttress local economies.

January brings another batch of resolutions. Most, alas, will be long forgotten by the end of first quarter. Because you want to make more of your investment in ESOP ownership and engage your employees as owners, why not resolve to use the SMART process to achieve your ownership-development goals in 2016?

SMART, as you may know, stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. Here’s how you can be SMARTer and make more of employee ownership this year.

S= Specific. What do you want to accomplish with your ESOP? What level of understanding and engagement do you want from employees? What attitudes, behaviors and actions would you like employee-owners to display in their daily jobs? Write down specifics that you want to see happen.