A Heartland specialty with bipartisan appeal

As you’ll see when you read this issue’s “HR secrets of the 50 Best,” one trait comes up a number of times: employee ownership.

Donald Trump as well as Bernie Sanders, take note. Because as Paul Halverson, a Minneapolis-based financial advisor, told Forbes magazine, Employee Stock Ownership Plans are “the redistribution of wealth done the right way.”

Unique among corporate structures, ESOPs both reduce inequality and incent workers to behave in robust capitalistic ways.

That’s because “we are all employeeowners who literally have a vested interest in the success of the organization,” as Nichole Dyer of Ulteig puts it in our “HR secrets” story. So, employees work with entrepreneurial zeal, always watching for ways to boost the company’s – and their own – success.

That’s the theory, at least. Does it match reality?

Yes, reports a 2016 analysis of existing studies, which reported on 102 samples covering nearly 57,000 firms. “Employee ownership has a small but positive and statistically significant relation to firm performance,” concluded the study, which was published in Human Resource Management Journal.

Douglas Kruse, management professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey and associate director of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, agrees. “Over 100 studies across many countries indicate that employee ownership is generally linked to better productivity, pay, job stability and firm survival,” Kruse wrote in 2016.

The Midwest already is wise to these benefits; about a third of the nation’s ESOPs are located here. But we think the word will spread, as our restless country keeps looking for smart ways to boost the American dream.

PUBLISHER KORRIE WENZEL

AD DIRECTOR STACI LORD

EDITOR

TOM DENNIS

CIRCULATION MANAGER BETH BOHLMAN

LAYOUT DESIGN ANNA HINSVERK

ACCOUNT MANAGERS

NICHOLE ERTMAN 800.477.6572 ext. 1162 nertman@prairiebusinessmagazine.com

PETER FETSCH 800-477-6572 ext. 1172 pfetsch@prairiebusinessmagazine.com

Prairie Business magazine is published monthly by the Grand Forks Herald and Forum Communications Company with offices at 375 2nd Avenue North, Grand Forks, ND 58203. Subscriptions are available free of charge. Back issue quantities are limited and subject to availability ($2/copy prepaid). The opinions of writers featured in Prairie Business are their own. Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, artwork are encouraged but will not be returned without a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

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