Independence

Why Employee Ownership? Sutcliffe Play's former owner explains why

Robin Sutcliffe sent me the transcript of last Wednesday's "Canteen Talk" he delivered to the company's employees to mark their employee buy-out.  I found it very inspirational and moving, and I'm delighted to have his permission to reproduce it here:

"This is the culmination of a dream that I have had since I was seventeen and possibly earlier, it is truly the beginning of the end of my life’s work.

Employee owned businesses deserve great leaders

Baxendale are delighted to announce the launch of a leadership programme, specifically designed for leaders in employee owned businesses.  This is very much a joint venture with Kellogg College's Centre for Mutual and Employee Owned Business based at Oxford University.  Details of the programme can be found here

Leadership is tremendously important in companies owned by their employees.  Indeed, if you look around the employee-owned community, there is a wealth of excellent leaders; Ali Parsa at Circle Health, Chris Parr at Tullis Russell,

Mutual Ownership - let's find the best way.

Two bald men fighting over a comb, is how Eddie Mair described the debate between the two main political parties on the topic of mutualism in the public sector.

The winning case for employee ownership

The case is closed and the argument that employee ownership is better for business has been won.  That was the message from last night's launch of a new report looking at research to date on employee ownership.  You can read the full report here.

The key findings are that

• Greater employee ownership could bring economic and social benefits to both the private and public sectors in the UK.
• Employee ownership improves employee engagement, innovation, sustainability and productivity

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Five reasons business owners choose employee ownership

I was very surprised at the first sentence in this article.

The Many Forms of Co - Ownership

It is great that co-ownership models are achieving such a high profile at the moment.  There are many reasons behind the attractiveness of the co-owned model for both public and private sectors.  The financial crisis, stemming largely from the fixation with short term rewards at the expense of long term prosperity has created dissatisfaction with the PLC and banking models, which are owned and controlled largely by external shareholders, whose interests are not aligned with the other business stakeholders.  In many areas of the public sector, morale is low because of perceived unfairness, inad

Co ownership in Sport - More Power to the Supporters

I had an interesting day yesterday at the Centre for Mutual and Employee-Owned Business which is based at Kellogg College, Oxford.

Employee Ownership of public services - A Success Story

Co ownership is fast becoming a hot issue in the forthcoming election.  As the parties argue over who thought of it first, what the model will be, whether the focus should be on public sector, private sector or both, they cynics are saying it can't work.  How can people run their own company, become truly involved in the strategy and direction of the business, and have real accountability in their leaders?  How can that work in the public service sector?

One company achieves all these as well as delivering an excellent service to its service users, and provides a great place to work. 

Tullis Russell and Inveresk - the difference in ownership.

Yesterday, I met with Eileen Jarrett who chairs the Employee Ownership Board at Tullis Russell Papermakers based in Fife, Scotland.  She was telling me that despite the challenges currently facing the paper industry, Tullis Russell continues to hold its own. 
 

Employee Ownership: better for business, individuals and society.

Why pursuit of shareholder value is bad for business, for individuals and for society.