BL Magazine

Business
Channel Islands, an employee-owned
company. He says: “We perform well in
staff retention, morale and productivity
relative to other retailers. Our company
ethic is that our partners share in the
rewards, through annual bonuses, but
also share in the responsibility for running
the partnership.”
Nigel Le Quesne, CEO of JTC Group,
another company with shared ownership,
similarly enthuses about the benefits:
“We’ve found that productivity is better
and it creates a sense of family and
cohesion. It’s important to us that our
employees are treated fairly, so, provided
all the ingredients are there, you’ll get a
better all-round result for your team,
clients and external partners.”
Indeed, Le Quesne is quite evangelical
about employee ownership. “It’s my
absolute belief that if we all have a real
stake in the company, then collectively we
will achieve more success and better results
and that success should then be shared in
proportion to each individual’s level of
input and contribution,” he explains.
There’s no doubt that embracing
employees as ‘partners’ makes sound
economic sense, and there are a number
of ways in which companies achieve this.
In the UK, for example, there are several
HMRC-approved schemes, including
Save As You Earn and Company Share
Option Plans. The schemes vary in terms of
whether shares are bought by employees or
given by the company, the tax advantages,
whether the shares can be sold separately,
and the influence that employees have over
the company direction.
FOLLOW THE LEADER
Larger companies may choose to follow
the John Lewis model, where the company
is held collectively in a trust. John Lewis
notes on its website that this creates a
stable long-term business model as such
companies are difficult to sell to a third
party. Employees also have a greater voice.
“We have separate democratic
structures for every level,” says Langston
of the Waitrose model. “So at branch level,
we have a forum called Partner Voice,
which holds to account the management
for the success of the store.”
“Representatives are democratically
elected from the shop floor and they have
a say in how we can make things happen,”
he continues. “This goes right up to the
Partnership Council that affects decisions
at the top level.”
Other companies, such as JTC, operate
a hybrid model, where staff are allocated
shares under one scheme, but have the
option of purchasing additional shares in
the company through a second scheme.
“We started our first Employee Benefit
Trust [EBT] in 1998, and in 2012 that paid
out £9 million to our staff shareholders
when we sold a 40 per cent stake in the
company to the private equity firm CBPE,”
explains Nigel Le Quesne.
“We then started EBT2 in 2012, which,
just like EBT1, holds shares in the company
for every single member of staff and is
growing as the business grows.
“Our Equity For All [E4A] scheme sits
alongside EBT2 and allows staff to directly
purchase shares in JTC Group. We thought
it was important to offer that option for
a number of reasons. First, regardless of
their level in the business, we want people
to have the option to increase their stake in
JTC if they wish. Second, we have grown
rapidly through acquisitions in recent years
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