ESOP Participants More Engaged at Work

In a study of over 5,000 participants in nine ESOP companies, Robert Buchele, Douglas Kruse, and Joseph Blasi found that employees in ESOP companies appear to be more engaged than employees in general. The data come from a large survey of employees created by the National Bureau of Economic Research Shared Capitalism Project. Results are compared to data from a 2002 General Social Survey of employees.

The study found that 67.9% of employees in ESOP companies said they work mostly as part of a team, compared to 60.9% in the general survey. On a four-point scale, with 4 being strongly agree, employees in ESOP companies averaged 3.26 when asked how much direct influence they had in deciding how they do their jobs, compared to 2.88 for the general survey. One-third of the workers said they were involved in a work team (there was no comparable question from the general survey).

While the number of participants in the survey is large, the sample is small and may not be representative of the ESOP universe. The results were presented at the 18th annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.