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Ownership Culture

Elevate your team's potential by building a culture of ownership

What Is Ownership Culture?

Just about every ESOP company wants to have employees who think and act like employee-owners. Compelling research and decades of experience show that employee ownership is in fact a powerful tool to improve corporate performance – but only when companies have “ownership cultures” in which employees think and act like owners. That is a lot more than being nice to customers, cutting down on waste, coming to work on time, and even working hard on the job.

An effective ownership culture, the research shows, is one that generates lots of ideas from a well informed and highly involved workforce. Companies that have these high-involvement, idea-generating cultures, generate an incremental 6% to 11% added growth per year over what their prior performance relative to their industries would have predicted.

Creating an ownership culture involves at least these six elements:

Effective ESOP Culture

 

Creating high engagement cultures is hard work. But it is work that pays off. We know of very few companies that backed away from these systems once they started them, although they are often changed. It’s common to start with one system, then find as people get used to that, their skills and confidence rise to a level where a different system is needed.

High engagement cultures have been repeatedly shown to be the most effective intervention a company can create to improve performance. But go to an NCEO conference and witness the enthusiasm and energy coming from managers and employees of these companies and you’ll learn something else—they are also the most fun way to run a company.

Video thumbnail for Oliver Winery's Sarah Anderson talking culture initiatives
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Oliver Winery's Sarah Anderson talks culture initiatives

How the NCEO Can Help

Educational Resources

The NCEO offers extensive resources to help companies build their ownership culture through education and employee engagement. Here are some of what is available to members:

  • The Download: a monthly communications resource for employee owned companies to share with their participants.
  • Templates and sample documents: a library of ready to use templates and sample documents from other employee owned companies. 
  • Resource toolkits: a curated selection of articles, webinars, templates, and sample documents. 
  • Peer Networking: an opportunity to connect with peers at other employee owned companies, to share ideas, best practices, and resources. 

The Ownership Culture Survey

Our comprehensive employee survey gives you the tools to most effectively measure your employee ownership culture. Survey results include comparison data from over 27,000 respondents at more than 160 companies. Company's receive summary report with specific recommendations based on your results and a personalized consultation with NCEO staff.

The Ownership Culture Survey will help gauge employee attitudes on topics such as:

  • Do employees understand your ESOP?
  • How much do employees feel like owners of your business? What would make them feel more like owners?
  • Are employees offered adequate opportunities to learn about the business?
  • Are managers receptive and responsive to employee feedback and input?

Communications Committee Crash Course

Whether you are just getting started or trying to get back on track, this training program will offer communications committees from companies of all shapes and sizes a way to learn, engage, and network with others in the employee ownership community.

Four separate training sessions will cover topics such as learning to develop an effective communications strategy, discuss common challenges and mistakes, create alignment with company leadership, and improve employee engagement strategies for the long term.

Answering Questions, Speaking, and Consulting

We encourage NCEO members to reach out to our expert staff with questions about your employee ownership plans, ownership culture, and available resources. While we are not a consulting organization and do not set up or administer plans, we can provide speakers for employee ownership-related events, and limited consulting services to help your company improve its ESOP communications and ownership culture. Email inquiries to customerservice@nceo.org or call us at 510-208-1300. Not a member? Give us a call to see how we can help.

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On ownership culture