BUSINESS NEWS - with Andrew Diprose of DORSETBIZNEWS
Meet the owners! Recruitment consultancy is now 100 per cent owned by its 30 employees The Partners who now own the renamed Rubicon People Partnership. All future employees will also be owners.
A privately owned recruitment consultancy is one of just four in the UK – and the only one on the south coast – to be wholly employee-owned. Twenty one years after Rubicon Recruitment Group was acquired by Lloyd Banks and Jocelyn Browne, the Dorset-based business has been sold and handed over to an Employee Ownership Trust. It means that all 30 employees of the consultancy now own 100 per cent making them custodians of the business for future generations. All future employees will also become owners. Of the 6m or so registered businesses in the UK there are fewer than 600 which are employee-owned. The John Lewis Partnership is the largest employee-owned
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business in the UK with gross sales of £11.7bn and a workforce of over 80,000 Partners. All of Rubicon’s employees will have an equal voice at quarterly meetings. An employee representing the Employee Ownership Trust will sit on the Board. The employees, who are now known as Partners, will also enjoy an equal share of the business’s profits. About two years ago the business – Dorset’s longest established privately owned recruitment consultancy – had come close to being sold to a large facilities company in the security market. Lloyd said: “It was for a good price but as they were doing their due diligence on us, we were doing the same in reverse on them. “It was clear they were going to do a ‘rip and strip’ of the business and it just didn’t feel right. “I also took six months away from the business after my wife, Salli, was diagnosed with stage
three to four stomach cancer and given just a few months to live. “The team did an amazing job while I was away and it made me really think about how the business should move onto the next stage. “Employee ownership protects jobs, retains our culture, provides clients with even more confidence in service delivery commitments and will be a catalyst for growth. “It also gives us additional resilience to face the challenges and opportunities ahead.” Lloyd, whose wife continues to make a full recovery, said his team were “chuffed to bits” at becoming owners in the business. “We are a different kind of recruitment business, and now employee ownership is a very visible demonstration of that.” Lloyd said Rubicon People Partnership, which is on course for an £11m turnover this year, would now be embarking on a ‘Go for Growth’ strategy.
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