Owners at Work

Ohio Employee Ownership Center
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Owners at Work Podcast

Interviews leading experts on issues pertaining to employee ownership including building an ownership culture, management practices, succession planning, economic development, and so much more.

  1. 12 SEPT

    How Direct Employee Ownership Created the Right Succession Plan, and Company Culture, at Cargas

    SUMMARY: One of the exciting happenings in the world of employee ownership today is the proliferation of different models and methods for bringing employees into the ownership of a company. In this episode we discuss the Direct Stock Ownership model that Chip Cargas, Founder of Cargas Systems, implemented at his company. We also discussed where the model took him, and this next stage of his entrepreneurial journey, with the development of the Tandem Center for Shared Business Success, a nonprofit initiative offering pathways for business success through profit sharing and direct employee ownership. We also talk with Nate Scott, current President and CEO of Cargas Systems and discuss his journey from employee, to employee owner, and finally to his role as a leader of the company. Finally we talk with Drew Mousetis, the Executive Director of the Tandem Center and get the scoop from him on his plans to grow employee ownership using the Direct Stock Ownership model.  Further Material  https://www.tandemcenter.org/  https://cargas.com/    Guest INFO:   Chip Cargas is the Founder & Chair Emeritus at Cargas Systems, an employee-owned software company with nearly 200 employees. They provide software for accounting, operations, sales and marketing. Chip founded the company in 1988 with the purpose of creating a caring environment where people would love to work. He served as CEO from the founding until December 2017, Board Chair until October 2020, and Board Member until March 2022. He was named Chair Emeritus in 2022. Chip continues to nurture the company’s purpose of “Shared Success for employees, customers, owners, partners, and community.” Cargas Systems has earned the following national & regional awards for its values and growth  Nate Scott is President and CEO of Cargas Systems, joining in 2005 as a sales consultant. He eventually became manager of the Sales and Marketing team. When Cargas launched a new business unit centered around its proprietary Cargas Energy software, he became VP. During his tenure, the business unit doubled in staff and doubled in revenue. Scott also took advantage of annual career advancement meetings and asked to lead cross-company initiatives. In 2014 he became President, and added CEO four years later.  Drew Mousetis is Executive Director of the Tandem Center for Shared Business Success with a background in business management. Before joining Tandem, Drew was a lead consultant at Cargas, where he embraced the ethos of employee ownership within a dynamic culture of engagement and profit sharing at the employee owned company. Prior to Cargas, Drew was the Director of Finance & Development at The GateHouse.     SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a DONATION today to help keep our work going.   WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu   ---------------------------------------------------------------------

    49 min

  2. 16 AUG

    The State of Sector: Worker Cooperatives

    Guests:   Olga Prushinskaya and Jamie Pockrandt, Democracy at Work Institute  Summary: The second most common form of employee ownership in the United States is the worker cooperative where workers participate in both the financial success and governance of the firms. Today there are over 750 worker cooperatives in the United States, which is triple the amount that existed in 2012. How do we know these numbers? Unlike the number of ESOPs which can be tracked using publicly available data generated by the government, there is no public entity that tracks worker cooperatives. Instead, it has been nonprofit groups that have filled in this gap in knowledge. On this episode I speak with Olga Prushinskaya and Jamie Pockrandt of the Democracy at Work Institute, a national organization committed to worker cooperative development – which includes gather data on worker cooperatives. We talk about their soon to be released State of the Sector report and what it found regarding worker cooperatives as well as other projects they have been working on which aim to better understand the impact that employee ownership is having on workers, companies, and communities.   Further Material  Learn about DAWI’s work here: https://institute.coop/   Existing datasets mentioned in the show: https://institute.coop/core-research     Guest Info:   Jamie Pockrandt, Data Architect, Democracy at Work Institute:   Email: jpockrandt@institute.coop | Phone: (415) 379-9201 Ext. 19  Olga Prushinskaya, Metrics and Impact Analyst  Email: olga@institute.coop | Phone: (415) 379-9201 Ext. 17    SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a DONATION today to help keep our work going.   WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu   ---------------------------------------------------------------------

    51 min

  3. 10 JUL

    Measuring the Impact of Employee Ownership in the United Kingdom

    Guest: Campbell McDonald, Ownership Works   SUMMARY: Much of the work for raising awareness and advocating for supportive policies for further expansion relies on data collection. When making the case for employee ownership, it is one thing to say that, in theory, employee ownership can benefit workers, companies, and communities. It is quite another to prove such claims through the collection of empirical data.  In this episode, I sit down with Campell McDonald, the chief executive of Ownership at Work, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about employee ownership in the United Kingdom. We talk in detail about the recent research project he oversaw, which collected first-of-its-kind data that measured the impacts of employee ownership on worker well-being, company performance, and various other indicators. Further Material ·        Find the report at this website: https://ownershipatwork.org/ Guest INFO : ·        Campbell McDonald:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/campbell-mcdonald-628378/?originalSubdomain=uk   SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a DONATION today to help keep our work going. WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------

    55 min

  4. 11 JUN

    Gina Schaefer on The Power of Telling Your Story

    Guest: Gina Schaefer SUMMARY: For 38 years, the OEOC has gathered hundreds of people from across the employee ownership community at our Annual Conference and every year, we invite a keynote speaker to address those in attendance. This year, we invited Gina Schaefer, the founder, CEO, and selling owner of A Few Cool Hardware Stores, which became 100% employee-owned in 2021. Her story of how her company came to be, her approach to building culture within the business, and her tendency to build relationships outside of it speak to the power of building community and how employee-owned companies are uniquely poised to do this. Beyond that, Gina’s address and the story of A Few Cool Hardware Stores highlight other important themes whose power we often underestimate: faking it until you make it, doing the hard thing, being curious, and telling our own stories of employee ownership, to name a few.  Further Material Gina’s Book Recover Hardware: https://ginaschaefer.com/book A Few Cool Hardware Stores: https://acehardwaredc.com/ Past OAW Episode featuring Gina: https://www.oeockent.org/owners-at-work-podcast/seaon-2-episode-7-a-few-cool-hardware-stores Guest INFO :    Gina Schaefer: https://ginaschaefer.com/about SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a DONATION today to help keep our work going. WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu

    32 min

  5. 7 JUN

    Employee Ownership in the Americas: A Path to Shared Prosperity

    SUMMARY: When we think about expanding awareness about employee ownership, we often think of the United States and how much more work we have to do. However, the movement to expand the prevalence and awareness of employee ownership goes well beyond US borders. In this episode, we highlight an international example of this effort. We speak with Rodrigo Fernandez del Valle and Gonzalo Hernandez Gutierrez about an edited book they published, which includes chapters on employee ownership contributed by practitioners, researchers, and thinkers worldwide. Their goal? Introduce students, government officials, and business leaders to employee ownership and how it can positively impact society. We talked about how the book project came to be, what the book's reception has been, and what projects they are working on now to expand employee ownership in Mexico, Latin America, and beyond.  Free Book Copy  Employee Ownership in the Americas: A Path to Shared Prosperity: https://cleo.rutgers.edu/articles/employee-ownership-in-the-americas-a-path-to-shared-prosperity/  Capital Incluyente Co-founded by Rodrigo with the purpose of providing technical assistance to those who want to create businesses owned by employees:https://capital-incluyente.org/  Guest Info: ·        Gonzalo Hernandez Gutierrez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gonzalo-hern%C3%A1ndez-guti%C3%A9rrez-phd-93a648a1/?originalSubdomain=mx ·        Rodrigo Fernandez del Valle: https://capital-incluyente.org/    --------------------------------------------------------------------- SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a DONATION today to help keep our work going. WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu

    35 min

  6. 22 MAR

    The European ESOP – A New Model of Employee Ownership

    SUMMARY: When we look into the field of employee ownership three major models come to mind, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), worker cooperatives, and employee-owned trusts. But practitioners are always looking to improve existing models and in some rare cases develop new ones. In this first episode of season five we speak with David Ellerman and Tej Gonza of the Institute for Economic Democracy about a new model they have developed which combines features of the ESOP and worker cooperative models – what they term the “European ESOP”. Thier hope is this model that can drive the expansion of broad-based employee ownership in Slovenia – the country where they both live – as well as the European Union more generally. We talk about what features of worker cooperatives and ESOPs were retained and why, how the model functions, and the process for getting supportive legislation passed in Slovenia to encourage the adoption of this model.   Further Reading:  The Institute for Economic Democracy: https://ekonomska-demokracija.si/eng/   The ESOP Coop Model Explained: https://ekonomska-demokracija.si/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/European-ESOP-IED2022.pdf   Guest INFO :   Tej Gonza: https://ekonomska-demokracija.si/eng/tej-gonza/   David Ellerman: https://ekonomska-demokracija.si/eng/david-ellerman/  SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a DONATION today to help keep our work going.   WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu

    58 min

  7. 10/10/2023

    Nexus Community Partner’s Reflections on the Kendeda Fund’s Big Bet Grant

    SUMMARY Back in 2018 the Kendeda Fund, a philanthropic foundation based in Atlanta, decided to make a series of big bets in areas that were both critical and timely. One of those areas was employee ownership and the investment made by Kendeda was historic. Over 5 years a total of $24 million dollars was provided to 4 employee owner support organizations. Those organizations include The Evergreen Cooperatives Fund for Employee Ownership, ICA Group, Nexus Community Partners, and Project Equity. The investment was made with four broad goals in mind – grow the number of employee-owned businesses, use patient capital to leverage investments, strengthen core elements of the employee ownership ecosystem, and amplify media coverage of employee ownership.   Upon entering the 5th year of the grant, Kendeda contracted with the Ohio Employee Ownership Center to carry out a reflection process that looked back on what these four organizations where able to achieve, assess what they learned, and identify future actions that would further develop and expand employee ownership in the US. The reflection process relied on numerous forms of data collection including in-person meetings, long form one on one interviews with grantees, selling owners, and new employee owners, analysis of transition data, and comparisons of the four grantees models for transitioning companies to employee ownership. The culmination of our findings was then published in a narrative report that drew on the insights of all stakeholders involved, which we encourage you to read.  However, like all reports, we could not include every bit of information we gathered.  But we strongly felt it necessary to provide grantee organizations with the space to explain, in their own words, how and why they do the work they do, how Kendeda’s investment helped them expand their impact, and where they see their work going in the future.  So, this interview with Christina Nicholson and Paty Viafara of Nexus Community Partners, is one in a series of interviews we carried out with organization that received support from the Kendeda Fund.   READ THE REPORT: www.oeockent.org/kendeda-employee-ownership-big-bet  GRANTEE INFORMATION   ICA Group: https://icagroup.org/   Nexus Community Partners: https://www.nexuscp.org/   Project Equity: https://project-equity.org/   The Fund for Employee Ownership: https://www.evgoh.com/tfeo/ WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu   SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But, they take time and money to produce. Consider making a DONATION today to help keep our work going.

    25 min

  8. 10/10/2023

    Project Equity’s Reflections on the Kendeda Fund’s Big Bet Grant

    SUMMARY Back in 2018 the Kendeda Fund, a philanthropic foundation based in Atlanta, decided to make a series of big bets in areas that were both critical and timely. One of those areas was employee ownership and the investment made by Kendeda was historic. Over 5 years a total of $24 million dollars was provided to 4 employee owner support organizations. Those organizations include The Evergreen Cooperatives Fund for Employee Ownership, ICA Group, Nexus Community Partners, and Project Equity. The investment was made with four broad goals in mind – grow the number of employee-owned businesses, use patient capital to leverage investments, strengthen core elements of the employee ownership ecosystem, and amplify media coverage of employee ownership.   Upon entering the 5th year of the grant, Kendeda contracted with the Ohio Employee Ownership Center to carry out a reflection process that looked back on what these four organizations where able to achieve, assess what they learned, and identify future actions that would further develop and expand employee ownership in the US. The reflection process relied on numerous forms of data collection including in-person meetings, long form one on one interviews with grantees, selling owners, and new employee owners, analysis of transition data, and comparisons of the four grantees models for transitioning companies to employee ownership. The culmination of our findings was then published in a narrative report that drew on the insights of all stakeholders involved, which we encourage you to read.  However, like all reports, we could not include every bit of information we gathered.  But we strongly felt it necessary to provide grantee organizations with the space to explain, in their own words, how and why they do the work they do, how Kendeda’s investment helped them expand their impact, and where they see their work going in the future.  So, this interview with Alison Lingane of Project Equity, is one in a series of interviews we carried out with organization that received support from the Kendeda Fund.   READ THE REPORT: www.oeockent.org/kendeda-employee-ownership-big-bet  GRANTEE INFORMATION   ICA Group: https://icagroup.org/   Nexus Community Partners: https://www.nexuscp.org/   Project Equity: https://project-equity.org/   The Fund for Employee Ownership: https://www.evgoh.com/tfeo/ WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu   SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But, they take time and money to produce. Consider making a DONATION today to help keep our work going.

    23 min
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About

Interviews leading experts on issues pertaining to employee ownership including building an ownership culture, management practices, succession planning, economic development, and so much more.

Information

  • Creator
    Ohio Employee Ownership Center
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2024
  • Episodes
    53
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Owners at Work

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