Employee Ownership Blog

One of the major employee-owned companies whose employee ownership character has flown under the radar for some time is AECOM Technology Corp., a Los Angeles-based global architecture and engineering company with 41,000 employees in more than 60 countries.

At the NCEO's sold-out annual conference in Chicago, keynote speaker Dean Schroeder, co-author of Ideas Are Free, talked about how his research with colleague Alan Robinson came to the surprising conclusion that what really distinguishes successful employee involvement systems is not the b

We are often asked if ESOP-owned companies can qualify for minority ownership status for federal Section 8(a) contract preferences if the majority of their beneficial ownership (as reflected in accounts held in the trust, allocated or vested) goes to qualifying minority employees.

One of the motifs running through the Bear Stearns implosion stories has been that employees owned 30% of the company, creating echoes of another Enron. The story is more complicated, and we have been at some pains (largely successful) to help reporters understand the differences.

The dollar you give to employees in ownership usually feels like a lost dollar to you. Unfortunately, it probably does not seem like a gained dollar to your employees.

Employee ownership companies again comprised over half the stock corporations on the the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, including the No. 1 company, Google, which has a variety of broad-based plans, and nine ESOP companies. Nominations will close April 9 for the next list.

Employee ownership and the Great Game of Business are natural partners. The NCEO has been working with the Great Game of Business since the early 1980s, and we strongly encourage anyone interested in making open-book management effective to attend this meeting April 30-May 2 in Saint Louis.

An October study by Thomas Weisel Partners, an investment banking firm, found that 53% of sell-side analysts use only non-GAAP reporting in their analyses of 50 leading technology companies. All but one of the companies provide non-GAAP statements.

ESOP companies perform substantially better when they get their employees involved in making decisions about everyday work issues. When a lot of people are coming up with a lot of ideas, the impact on the bottom line can be dramatic.

According to Marc Mathieu of the European Federation of Employed Shareholders, in the 2,500 largest European companies there are now 8.2 million employee owners holding 260 billion Euros ($406 billion) in assets.

As part of a broader survey of 300 privately held companies with $100 million in revenue or more, WorldatWork and Vivient Consulting report that only one-third of the surveyed companies have some form of long-term incentive plan.

Each year, the NCEO publishes an issue brief on the state of employee ownership.