Employee Ownership Blog
NCEO
The next Is an ESOP Right for You? seminar is coming soon to Nashville, TN on July 29-30. This two-day event is designed for companies considering a transition to employee ownership. Over the course of two days, attendees will have the opportunity to meet with existing ESOP companies, expert service providers and staff from the NCEO and Employee Ownership Expansion Network (EOX) to learn more about employee ownership as a whole, the mechanics of setting up an ESOP including, feasibility, transaction structure, tax implications and more, as well as explore alternatives to an ESOP. The meeting will consist of both interactive roundtable discussions as well as presenter led content, with plenty of opportunities for Q&A.
The Department of Labor (DOL) has posted the latest Form 5500 filing data, which covers plan year 2021 (the most recent available year). The data includes 6,533 ESOPs filing for 2021, covering 14.7 million participants holding over $2.1 trillion in total assets.
by Eamon Mulholland, Human Resources Partner and Employee-Owner, Wise Consulting
By a vote of 220-205, the House passed the Mental Health Matters Act. Most of the bill would provide funds to expand access to mental health and substance abuse services for children and young adults but another provision would bar compulsory arbitration in all ERISA plans. Additionally, it would ban forced arbitration clauses, class action waivers, and discretionary clauses, and it would make representation waivers unenforceable. Participants can still agree to arbitration after a dispute arises, but only if:
A former communications committee member at a mature ESOP company recently told me that her participation gave her the tools to apply for an plan administration position that had opened at the company. Prior to participating on the committee, she had not gained the education or experience necessary for the role. She noted that being in a position to educate and communicate technical information to her colleagues made her a better learner in the process, but that the learning never stops. Whether you're new to employee-ownership or ESOP communications or you need a refresh, there's always more to be shared and ideas to be had when working with other employee-owners in all 50 states.
When employee-owned businesses openly share their best practices or approaches to employee engagement and communication, it’s not lost on those attending our conferences for the first time. Some of the best ideas or solutions attendees get from our conferences come directly from other employee-owners and ESOP companies. The networking and collaboration is a huge part of why so many employee-owned businesses thrive.
Every year, my colleagues and I at Chartwell look forward to the NCEO's events, and this year's Fall ESOP Forum is no different. We couldn't be more excited to finally reconnect with all of our ESOP friends at this year's Forum.
The NCEO's 2020 ESOP Executive Compensation Survey is now collecting responses through October 30. Conducted since 2005, this survey is one of very few data sources for ESOP-specific executive compensation data. The survey is open to all privately held companies with an ESOP in place.
Our recent ESOP Topics Survey gathered data from 160 ESOP companies on how they’re handling the COVID-19 crisis and other issues, including questions about their turnover rates in 2019. The surveyed ESOP companies reported dramatically lower turnover than overall national averages. This difference persisted at the industry level in each of the industries with enough data to make comparisons: wholesale trade, manufacturing, and construction ESOP companies had turnover rates less than half of national averages for their industry. See tables below for details (national data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
