8 results for year: 2013


EOA CEO Delighted at Increased Support for Employee Owners in #AS2013

“Today’s confirmation of new tax incentives for employee ownership, and the announcement of an extra £25m funding for them, taking the figure to £75m each year from next April, is very welcome news. The Employee Ownership Association has been calling for these measures for some time now and our Members are pleased to see that they will now be implemented and properly funded. “This Autumn Statement marks another key step towards our target of 10% of GDP being delivered by employee owned businesses by 2020, a target that has been widely endorsed, including by some in Government. These measures will help to create more of the higher ...

Nuttall One Year On & Call for Evidence on Perpetuity Launched

In partnership with the City of London Corporation, and the Department for Business, Industry and Skills the EOA co-hosted a well-attended launch event in London’s financial district. Business Minister Jo Swinson MP introduced the report and chaired an hour long meeting with contributions from Nuttall Review author Graeme Nuttall, EOA CEO Iain Hasdell and a panel of businesses who each developed employee ownership within their companies during the period of the Review. Tech start-up Gamevy explained that they used employee ownership to attract talented staff in a competitive marketplace, whilst Mary Knowles Homecare see their employee ...

Ambitious for a Decade of Employee Ownership

Employee ownership is not new. In fact it is a proven model of business where employees have both a voice in how the business is run through direct engagement and a stake in its success. Employee ownership can be found in a diverse range of sectors across the UK, from manufacturing to retail, engineering to healthcare and consultancy to publishing. We are all familiar with successful companies such as Unipart Group, Mott MacDonald, John Lewis Partnership, Arup, and CH2MHill, but there are many more that have placed a controlling part of the business in the hands of their employees. It is now over a year since my predecessor, Norman Lamb, asked ...

Introducing Employee Ownership to a Law Firm

So we are now Postlethwaite Solicitors Limited (trading as Postlethwaite, Employee Ownership Lawyers), which means that our staff can now become shareholders. As a law firm specialising in employee ownership, we are committed to involving as many of our team in our ownership as law firm regulation will allow. Why are we doing this, and how do we plan to go about it? I am convinced that spreading the ownership will help us become a better business.   I think that everyone can be motivated by sharing in our ownership.  Whilst we are fortunate in that each member of our team already thinks like an owner, we all still have plenty of ...

Employee Ownership: A View From The (Cutting) Edge

Founded in July 1932 by Mr WR Swann and Mr JA Morton to manufacture and sell razor blades, even before they began trading the founders drew up a philosophy based on four principles to guide them in their entry into the capitalist world: Claims of individuals producing in an industry came first, before anything else, and must always remain first. They are the human beings on which everything is built. If the industry cannot pay the rightful reward of labour (while they are producing for profit for the owners) then a new policy is required on the part of the management to make it do so. If the management can't do the job, then a new manage...

Employee ownership: A Viable Exit Strategy

Is there another way? A new variation on the theme which is gathering pace is the idea of transferring the business into the ownership of employees generally. There is no single model for this but it may be based on any or all of the following circumstances : the owner does not wish to pass control to a competitor who may simply take the business and dispense with the services of anyone  who  does not fit the new corporate culture , the owner is attracted by the proposition, supported by substantial academic research, that businesses owned by their employees tend to perform better than those not so owned , the new regime may involve ...

Future Healthcare Together

One of the problems in this model is the disconnect between the shareholders, the people actually delivering the service and the customers. All too often the emphasis is put on the financial return rather than on delivering the service that the customer actually wants or needs. This can be seen in the mis-selling of PPI, pensions and other financial services. Because this business model of shareholders is accepted as the norm it has become increasingly popular in dentistry - and our fear is that these same pressures to create the return will, and indeed are, being placed upon the point of service delivery which ultimately affects the ...

A Fairer Share of Capitalism

This year’s £210.8m bonus pay-out is a reflection of continued success across the John Lewis Partnership. With a 27% increase on last year (£165.2m last year), following a 9.3% rise in sales to £9.5bn, it’s clear that consumers believe in the values of an employee owned business and value excellent service alongside high quality goods. At Waitrose and John Lewis we understand that times are tight for our customers, and for our Partners. Indeed up and down the high street, well-known brands are struggling in challenging economic circumstances. We were encouraged by the acceleration in the rate of our sales growth during the year and ...