Employee Ownership

WHY THIS TOPIC:

The relationship between labor and capital is something we deal with on a regular basis. Today’s headwinds are laborers’ anger at the inequality of wage stagnation in conjunction with the winner-take-all games for capital. We will explore a technique for creating an integrated identity between the two.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• Benefits and drawbacks of becoming partial or fully employee owned
• Thinking through the benefits and drawbacks of an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) and Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)
• Governance structures and transition costs associated with employee ownership

YOU MIGHT ENJOY THIS IF YOU ARE:

• A founder or owner thinking about long term capital structures, using employee ownership as an exit strategy, or as an incentive for team members
• A team member curious why your company is or is not offering employee stock ownership

Paul Pagel is co-CEO of 8th Light, an employee-owned company that crafts software – from mobile to microservices – that is beautiful, durable, and shows pride in workmanship. He’s passionate about increasing the quality of software in the world by training developers and designers to be more skilled, providing great places to work, and supporting them to make the code that runs the world better.