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A Great Idea on How Spread the Word About Employee Ownership at Your Company on Your Social Networks

Jesse Tyler at employee-owned Hypertherm is one of the most creative people we know in terms of coming up with ideas on how to communicate employee ownership and how to get employees engaged as owners. So we asked him what he could come up with as a way to spread the idea of employee ownership on social media and within your own company. His idea, we think, is a real winner.

Here’s how it would work. A company would send out a series of questions to its employees asking them to describe the experience of being an employee-owner. You can do one question each month.

To help encourage participation, maybe give out a few fun prizes, one of two for the best ones and a few random ones for just entering. You might want to limit how many times any one person can win. The answers should be brief—a sentence or two. Post the responses internally, but then pick a few of the best and put them in a post on your social media accounts, such as LinkedIn or Facebook.

By posting to your connections, you can help market your company and employee ownership at the same time. Asking the questions each month is an effective, fun and easy way to remind people about what employee ownership means. Here Are the 11 Questions Jesse Suggested

1. How do you talk about ownership when you are out in the world, not around other owners? 2. How do you describe the experience of ownership to your friends and family? 3. What is your nutshell way to help new coworkers understand ownership? 4. What does ownership mean to you? 5. If you had to describe ownership in three words, what three words would you share? 6. What is different about working at an ESOP? I believe, and this is why…. 7. Is leadership different at an ESOP? If yes, how? (From both the reporting and leader viewpoint) 8. What is one thing your company does well on ownership culture and communication that you want to share? 9. What is your employee ownership aha moment? It’s not the first time you heard about employee ownership or when you started to like it. It’s that moment when you said “aha” employee ownership is going to be a game changer. Have you had an employee ownership moment that you’d like to share? 10. What keeps you coming back to work each day? 11. What have you done to promote employee ownership outside our company?

We raised this idea at the NCEO’s Innovative Communications Coalition meeting in October, and Darin Olivarez of Black & Veatch had a great idea that could be number 12. The company already asked employees to fill in the question “Together we….” It could be anything that people think they do together at Black & Veatch. To see what employees came up with, see the page at Black & Veatch’s web site.

Of course, these questions are only suggestions. Other ideas might include: 1. As an owner, do you feel you have more of a voice at work? If so, can you give an example? 2. Why would you tell a customer that it is better to buy from an employeeowned company? 3. Has being an owner ever made you feel like work is more of a community? Tell us how.

What is your employee ownership “aha” moment?

4. How do you think the economy would be better if many more companies were employee-owned?

Finally, to help people seeing the posts understand what employee ownership is, you can link to a basic article on the NCEO website, What Is Employee Ownership? or to a visual explanation, How an ESOP Works. n We would love your feedback on this idea. Email your comments to Corey Rosen.

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