Building Ownership Together: Highlights from the ESOP Multistate Regional Conference:
The Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) Multistate Regional Conference brought together leaders, professionals, and employee-owners from across the ESOP community. From executives and board members to HR leaders, advisors, and culture champions, the event created a space for connection, learning, and inspiration.
The conference focused on sharing best practices, navigating policies and regulations, and sparking conversations about what it truly means to build a culture of ownership. Alongside networking opportunities, we left with fresh insights on how to strengthen our company and employee-owners to continue to provide great results internally and with our clients.
Here are some key takeaways that resonated with us as employee-owners:
- Invite hard questions. You can’t expect people to act like owners if you don’t treat them like owners.
- Think about your why. Employee ownership works best when everyone rallies around a shared purpose.
- Empowered teams show humility, curiosity, and empathy. Asking hard questions, admitting what you don’t know, and practicing empathy builds stronger connections.
- Leadership needs to be at all levels of an organization. Employee-owners thrive when they’re trusted to make decisions, innovate, and move the organization forward.
- Be transparent with your employees. If you don’t fill in the blanks, someone will do it for you.
- Employees can handle the truth. When you treat employees like true partners, they’ll seek out the truth, embrace it, and grow stronger because of it.
- Don’t be afraid of failure. Embrace it. Teams that view setbacks as learning opportunities unlock more innovation and long-term success.
- Recognize milestones each step of the process. Recognizing milestones throughout a project can keep the energy high and prevent burnout. Don’t wait until the finish line to reward your employees.
- Know what drives your employees. Knowing what motivates your employees allows you to reward them in a meaningful way and build lasting engagement.
- Context and systems matter. Even the best performer can’t thrive in a broken system. Prioritize creating systems that work with sustainable processes.
Our Take As Owners
This conference reminded us how valuable it is to learn from peers and bring back new ideas that help us grow, both as a team and as an ESOP. Employee ownership is more than receiving stock in a company, it’s about rallying around a shared purpose, working together toward a brighter future, and embracing what it truly means to be owners. When we lean into that mindset, we don’t just grow our business. We grow each other.
Curious to learn more? Check out our recent blog about employee ownership and why it matters: https://butlertill.com/post/statement-day-what-it-means-why-it-matters
Contributors: Noelle Acquilano
