Maximising Employee Engagement through Employee Ownership

You may think the link between employee ownership and employee engagement
was well established. Yet, if you judge by the ongoing research into the
subject, this does not appear to be the case. Such research suggests there are
many who still have to be convinced. For that reason, if no other, the latest
findings from a study carried out by Loughborough University are a welcome
addition.

Even so, the findings that three quarters of employees who participate in
their employer’s share ownership scheme were more engaged, motivated and
committed to their employer, are hardly surprising.   

Of course as an employer, manager or HR professional you would jump at the
chance to improve your organisational culture to that extent. After all if 71%
are more likely to consider the cost implications of what they do and 66%
produce as higher quality of work, you inevitably have to benefit from a
performance improvement, don’t you?

Yet while no-one in their right mind would refuse an opportunity like this,
perhaps the most interesting aspect of this research is, “Why does share
ownership only have this effect on 75% of the employees?”    

Could the answer possibly be in the term “share ownership?” You see there
are several problems with shares that could diminish their desirability for the
lower echelons of employees.    

• They come at a cost. This means that for lower earning
  employees the marginal income they have to forego – even if they understand the
  longer-term advantages – is too great for them to be able to sacrifice the
  income. For them cash is king.
• They may not have the educational or social
  background to understand the benefits of share ownership.
• Share schemes are complicated to set up and
  administer and thus they might not understand all the details of belonging, or
  they might even feel it is not worth the hassle.
• The inequitability of the scheme. It may be all
  very well offering shares to employees, but if the relative offerings are
  disproportionate or are perceived to favour managers and high-earners, they may
  simply fuel or exacerbate resentment. This will certainly do nothing for employee
  engagement.

There can be a huge conceptual difference between share ownership and
employee ownership. The former may be a nice to have, but does it engender the
empowerment that comes with a true the sense of ownership and belonging?  The likelihood is that the disengaged employees
in the survey are members of share schemes that do not create such a sense of
empowerment. If you are looking to engage your employees more you need to come
up with an ownership scheme that is:-

• Universal;
• Fair and equitable; and
• Empowering.

How does your employee ownership scheme measure up against those criteria?