Employee Ownership

All company owners holding a single share in the business. This means that all employees hold an equal stake in the business. Our articles of association prevent us from profit sharing and so any surplus at year end is invested into the business and the human capital in particular as we seek to invest in the professional development of our staff as much as possible.

With ownership rights come responsibilities and we see our form of ownership as a core strength. How we undertake our business development, how we seek to maximise the productivity of the company and how we use our resources in the most effective ways are all guided by our employee owned status. We have structures in place to ensure that employee voice is a real and tangible part of the business and that we consult on how the business lives the values we have collectively agreed to stand by.

We are members of the Employee Owners Association and we participate in this network to connect to likeminded businesses, learn about governance, to develop best practices and to support other businesses as they develop their employee owned status. We have trained our elected employee Directors through the EOA and see their role in governance as critical to the operation of the board.

As an employee owned business we want our staff to be contributing to how the business is run and managed. We are also seeking ways to ensure that staff can contribute to how our business grows through their participation and in developing opportunities. Our staff are our greatest asset and so their support is crucial to how we manage our business. We have learned from other employee owned businesses and have participated in networks where we have explored our employee owned status so that we can develop our identity and ensure that we are bringing our staff with us at every stage.

 Our governance is supported by three Non Executive Directors who have been recruited to the Board by our employee owners, including our Chair. We know that to be efficient we have to exercise executive decision making through our Board whilst ensuring that the Board is accountable to the staff through reporting and via the Annual General Meeting. Recent work has set out where delegated decision making takes place, where consultations take place and how we identify areas for the participation of the whole company in decision making.

We are also members of Social Enterprise UK