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ESOPs have to operate according to a complex and detailed set of rules to make sure they really benefit employees. It’s a fair trade—Congress has provided ESOP companies, their owners, and their employees with a number of tax benefits.

Your company’s ESOP valuation sometimes comes as a surprise. Maybe you had a strong year, but the stock price did not go up very much, or even went down. Or maybe you had not such a good year, but the stock price still did okay. What’s going on?

Yes, as long as it follows common best practices.

1. The Idea of Employee Ownership Goes Way Back: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were bitter rivals, but they agreed that the government should help rebuild the whaling industry—but only if the crews got a share of the profits and/or ownership.

Boards of directors can be something of a mystery to employee-owners. Who is on them and what do they do? Do they run the company or just act on a few major issues? Whose interests are they meant to protect?

In thinking about what to say in my closing remarks at this year’s annual conference, I decided to focus on a few things that great employee-owned companies do that set them apart. It’s not a definitive list, but it is what has really struck me about great ESOP companies over the years.

You may have heard about private equity, or perhaps you know someone whose company was sold to a private equity firm. Maybe you have even read that there is a new movement in some private equity firms to include employees as owners in some of their deals. There is a pretty good chance that when your company set up its ESOP, selling to a private equity firm was, at the very least, a potential option.

In the 1960s and 1970s, underfunded pension plans garnered a great deal of public attention.

We often get questions from employees that start off with “why can’t I...?” These questions focus on additional rights employees would like to have and are based on the idea that if you are an owner, you ought to have certain rights.

There are different types of committees, the first most commonly known as the ESOP committee or ESOP administration committee. This committee is typically appointed by the board of directors and delegated the responsibility to oversee the day-to-day operations of the plan.