The UK is leading the world in the speed of growth of employee ownership, with countries such as Canada, Australia and Denmark amongst others looking to learn from UK policy and practice. Read about the impact being employee owned is having.
Our colleagues at the Employee Ownership Association is conjunction with Ownership at Work have released their ‘EO Knowledge Programme 2023 report – People Powered Growth: The rapid and impactful rise of employee and worker ownership in the UK.
The findings are remarkable. They clearly show that this small section of the UK economy (over 1,650 in the UK, over 65 here in Wales) is punching above its weight across multiple dimensions of impact on individuals, businesses, communities and the wider economy.
The headline finding is that employee owners are 8-12% more productive. Behind that, we find that EOBs tend to be making more money and doing more to recycle that money into the economy by creating more jobs and investing in improving their products and services. That productivity figure may seem unsurprising once we acknowledge that EOBs invest more in supporting employee health and wellbeing, on-the-job training and critical benefits like flexible and remote working.
Further, EOBs pay out twice as much in bonuses and dividends to employees whilst being five times less likely to make them redundant. Add to this that EOBs are driving a fundamentally fairer economy, sharing a stake and a say at work with groups typically under-represented in business ownership, and twice as likely to have diversity and inclusion policies in place. For lower earners, EOBs pay a minimum higher annual wage of roughly £2,900 more than non-EOBs and are twice as likely to hold accreditations for fair pay and reward.
