This fact sheet, released at the 2024 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, provides some updated statistics regarding employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) in manufacturing in total, and, separately, for ESOPs in publicly traded corporations and closely-held corporations

In this fact sheet, released at the 2024 Employee Ownershipo Ideas Forum, the authors provide some updated statistics regarding ESOPs in rural counties with a focus on closely-held corporations where rural ESOPs are most prevalent.

This fact sheet, released at the 2024 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, summarizes some of the latest research on employee ownership with a focus on employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs).

Shared Success, a demonstration project run by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program, leverages the trusted relationships of community development financial institutions (CDFIs) to improve job quality for workers while helping small business owners strengthen their businesses. This piece discusses findings from a portion of the Shared Success Project, which helps to understand business perceptions of job quality, identify strategies to encourage the adoption of job quality elements, and define recommendations to involve financial institutions in this process.

This piece provides an overview of job quality challenges affecting LGBTQ+ workers, including economic need, discrimination, and barriers to career advancement. The piece also contextualizes these challenges in the current landscape of anti-LGBTQ+ policies being passed in the United States.

This interactive guide helps business owners understand the role an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) could play at their company. It provides a general overview of the structure of ESOPs, links to external resources, and describes the nuances of ESOPs in different corporate structures (C-Corp, B-Corp, or other form). Users of the tool are able to customize the path through the guide in accordance with the type of corporation they want to transition to employee ownership.

In this event, Benjamin Lorr, author of “The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket,” traces the history and evolution of the modern-day supermarket, exposes the grocery supply chain, and reveals the often exploited and underpaid labor that goes into making sure shelves are stocked. Lorr paints a vivid picture of how agricultural and meat processing workers, fisherman, truck drivers, and grocery store workers, among others, often endure poverty and sometimes worse as they work to feed our country.

Recent research by UpSkill America and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) has found that only 25% of the HR leaders who took part in a December 2023 i4cp survey perceived workforce development as a strength of their organization, and just 9% of more than 100 private and public company board directors surveyed indicated they were very confident in their company’s ability to effectively upskill its employees for the future. Read the brief to learn more about next practices in upskilling, including internal training, apprenticeship, and tuition assistance that will help any organization to be more productive and resilient for the future.

In this event, Natalie Foster, author of “The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy,” asks us to imagine a new economic framework that casts aside the failures of the trickle-down approach and builds economic security and well-being from the bottom up. Foster, who serves as president and co-founder of the Economic Security Project and as a senior fellow with the Institute’s Future of Work Initiative, describes a bold vision in which housing, health care, higher education, dignified work, family care, and an opportunity to build generational wealth are guaranteed for all by our government.

The 2024 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum brought together members of Congress and their staff, government officials, practitioners, researchers, think tanks, philanthropy, investors, and the leaders of employee-owned companies to learn about and discuss the latest in policy, research, finance, and practice. The theme was “Employee Ownership on the Ground,” which brought innovative employee share ownership initiatives and speakers from around the country to DC to highlight how this bipartisan approach to improving jobs, wealth creation, and business performance is helping create more equitable economies in states, cities, and rural communities.