One quick note: I appreciate the analogy to 401k adoption but it's worth remembering that retirement plans are disproportionately available to high-earners so if the goal is to reduce the wealth gap, we need to be thoughtful about interventions that truly benefit low wage workers. Some good datapoints on who has access to retirements plans here: https://www.epi.org/publication/chapter-2-retirement/#charts
Re: Employee Equity Act -- the new, bipartisan American Ownership and Resilience Act (AORA) would help small businesses convert to employee ownership while giving an exit to the owners, whether they're original local owners nearing retirement or remote investors.
I'm excited about AORA and think it deserves more attention. FWIW I wrote all my representatives to support it. I hope it gets scheduled for floor discussion and vote.
Yes!!!!! I’ll definitely be talking about AORA, especially as I get to talking about how we can fund better business structures. But it’s a good call that we should look into what we can do to move it forward! I’ll do some more research here.
The broker incentives seems particularly key, and tricky. I love the idea of starting further up the pipeline to develop a train a new generation of brokers focused on ESOPs who potentially get a small amount of equity in each company. It could be an ESOP version of bizbuysell.com, or maybe first target existing brokers on bizbuysell to consider ESOP conversion instead of direct sale.
Yes! These are great ideas. I think getting a small amount of equity would be a good longer term incentive for brokers. If we know this is a goal we want to achieve, incentivizing brokers seems a logical next step.
I would love to see the Employee Equity Act become reality. These are truly great ideas on how to enable meaningful equity ownership by employees over time by truly incentivizing companies to go down this path and better share the value created by their most valuable asset (employees) with them. Significant equity of companies in their employee hands has huge advantages by aligning everyone’s goals and significantly reducing turnover and training costs.
Me too, I think there’s a lot more than just three things we could do too. And given two generations, I think we could get to 100% of workers being owners. But I’ll share more ideas as we go. Still researching whether those ones are viable.
Hey Elle - Thanks for posting this! Topic near & dear to my heart.
ICYMI: Rutgers has a nice analysis of the number of companies that are well suited for conversion to EO: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/how-many-firms-are-good-candidates-for-employee-ownership/
One quick note: I appreciate the analogy to 401k adoption but it's worth remembering that retirement plans are disproportionately available to high-earners so if the goal is to reduce the wealth gap, we need to be thoughtful about interventions that truly benefit low wage workers. Some good datapoints on who has access to retirements plans here: https://www.epi.org/publication/chapter-2-retirement/#charts
Re: Employee Equity Act -- the new, bipartisan American Ownership and Resilience Act (AORA) would help small businesses convert to employee ownership while giving an exit to the owners, whether they're original local owners nearing retirement or remote investors.
I'm excited about AORA and think it deserves more attention. FWIW I wrote all my representatives to support it. I hope it gets scheduled for floor discussion and vote.
See Sen. Van Hollen's press release, which links to the bill itself: https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/news/press-releases/van-hollen-moran-moore-trahan-introduce-bipartisan-bill-to-boost-employee-ownership-of-businesses
I hadn't heard of The Employee Ownership Expansion Network until I read your post, but am guessing they might have helped with AORA-- if so, right on!
I just discovered The Elysian -- looks great, glad to be here!
Yes!!!!! I’ll definitely be talking about AORA, especially as I get to talking about how we can fund better business structures. But it’s a good call that we should look into what we can do to move it forward! I’ll do some more research here.
Welcome to the project!!!!!!!
The broker incentives seems particularly key, and tricky. I love the idea of starting further up the pipeline to develop a train a new generation of brokers focused on ESOPs who potentially get a small amount of equity in each company. It could be an ESOP version of bizbuysell.com, or maybe first target existing brokers on bizbuysell to consider ESOP conversion instead of direct sale.
Yes! These are great ideas. I think getting a small amount of equity would be a good longer term incentive for brokers. If we know this is a goal we want to achieve, incentivizing brokers seems a logical next step.
Background on the current situation.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/megan-greenwell-bad-company-interview
I would love to see the Employee Equity Act become reality. These are truly great ideas on how to enable meaningful equity ownership by employees over time by truly incentivizing companies to go down this path and better share the value created by their most valuable asset (employees) with them. Significant equity of companies in their employee hands has huge advantages by aligning everyone’s goals and significantly reducing turnover and training costs.
Me too, I think there’s a lot more than just three things we could do too. And given two generations, I think we could get to 100% of workers being owners. But I’ll share more ideas as we go. Still researching whether those ones are viable.