Find Your Resource

NCEO research in this newsletter (see page 4) shows a mixed trend for private-company ESOPs—a slight decrease (1.2%) in plans from 2014 to 2019, accompanied by a larger change, positive this time, in active participants (an increase of 5.7%) over the same period.

It took an internship in Ukraine for me to realize how amazing US ESOPs are.

You’re reading this newsletter, maybe for the first time, on a screen. After printing thousands of newsletters every other month for 40 years, we have shifted the newsletter to this all-digital and every-month format. 

If you want an audience of people from ESOP companies, offer them new data about the repurchase obligation.

Succession planning for the CEO is one of the highest-stakes transitions a company will face. At the NCEO, we talk with a lot of companies that have gone through multiple successions.

We all know that employee ownership is a concept most of the country is not used to. It takes education and, for many people, some time simply has to pass before the idea stops feeling just a bit foreign.

The beginning of the year is a good time to assess, and it’s a pleasure to report back to you, the members of the NCEO, about the year that just ended.

Our Annual Conference is always a place for the employee ownership community to learn and exchange ideas, but this year, it struck me more than ever that it is also where we gather to explore the leading edges of employee ownership.

In the airport today, I was chatting with a family with three young children. One of the boys said they were traveling “back to our language.” For him—and for all of us—home is where the way people speak feels natural.

The NPR business program Planet Money, in a special report on fitness clubs, concluded that “gyms want to be a product that everyone buys, but no one actually uses.” The NCEO is nothing like that. We exist to make employee ownership thrive, and the only way we can do that is if you, our members, actively use our resources. To help make sure that we offer the resources that you want us to, we’ve done some focus groups with members, and we’ve learned some things that you maybe already know about your membership.