Member spotlight: Page\Park

Page\Park is an architectural firm based in Glasgow that made the transition to employee ownership in December 2013. Since then, the business has recruited 12 new employee-owners, increasing its staff to a total of 54, to meet the growth in demand for their services – a positive commercial upturn which owners attribute in part to their transition to employee ownership.

As they had already developed a business model that shared responsibility across all levels of the office structure, the team at Page\Park held the view that employee ownership secured the future of the business well beyond the involvement of the present owners and perfectly fitted their existing culture of transparency and cooperation.

By sharing responsibility alongside sharing benefits, Page\Park has seen ever-increasing levels of staff engagement and a renewed impetus to drive success within the business. Now Page\Park are seeing more and more architectural firms expressing their interest in how employee-ownership has driven their success within their sector.

Brian Park, of Page\Park, said:

“The transition to employee ownership presented no real challenges. Instead there was an atmosphere of interest and excitement from all involved. A tagline of “All change, no change” emphasised to staff and employees that, on a day-to-day basis, the business would run in the same way that it had always done. Page\Park very simply and smoothly transitioned to a different legal entity (a limited company with all shares owned by an Employee Benefit Trust). The official day of transition was celebrated with an event attended by clients, consultants and employees and there was a great atmosphere.

“It may all sound too good to be true, but it has been painless and indeed energising to have made this change… I’m now even more convinced that making the move to employee ownership was the right thing to do.”