A Visual Guide to Employee Ownership
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At the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO), a nonprofit membership and research organization,
our task is to provide accurate, unbiased information
about employee stock plans such as ESOPs and
serve our thousands of members. But the often technical information we provide doesn't always provide interested people with straightforward illustrations of where employee
ownership is found and how it works, and it doesn't always provide the right tools to communicate employee ownership and its benefits.
This site exists to illustrate the world of employee ownership (for now, in the U.S. only)
through maps, infographics, and videos, and other means. Please let us know what you think and check back soon.
New: We added the winner of our 2020 employee ownership video contest.
An employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is a benefit plan with advantages for the company, employees, and the original owners. Owners sell shares to the ESOP trust, which holds them for the employees.
Currently, there are about 6,940 ESOPs and equivalent plans employing roughly 13.5 million U.S. employees. ESOP companies are diverse: there are ESOPs in almost every industry and in all company sizes.
Employee-owners were four times less likely to be laid off during the recent recession. Employees at ESOP companies have 2.5 times greater retirement accounts than equivalent employees elsewhere.
Employee-owned companies are often known for having inclusive cultures—cultures that aspire to make employees feel like the owners they are. At our 2017 conference in Denver, the NCEO spoke with a variety of employee-owners from ESOP companies from across the country about how culture manifests at their workplaces. In this video, they explain how "employee ownership is the glue that keeps us all together in a dispersed workforce"; how it fuels teamwork and "a collaborative nature" where "everybody is just invested in this business"; and beyond that, how a culture of shared ownership creates a feeling of family, with "all of us working together to make it a better company." See more in our video section.
Our Employee Voices section highlights what employee-owners in a variety of companies (and ownership plans) across the U.S. say about what employee ownership means to them.
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