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Employee Ownership: an intergenerational industrial transition and inclusive growth model

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16 January 2025

Employee Ownership: an intergenerational industrial transition and inclusive growth model

Financing the ecosystem

Partnerships

Skills

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An Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) is an option for business owners who want to offer their workers a part of the firm. When looking to reward their board of directors, workers, and contractors, tech firms often turn to ESOPs. Although allowing employees to acquire shares in the firm is straightforward, there are many factors to consider while establishing the plan’s parameters. As ESOPs provide workers with a financial interest in the company’s success, they may be utilized to recruit and retain exceptional people. 

Content source
https://ied.si/en/
Authors

Editorial Team: Diesis

Topics
Geographical descriptors

EU-27

Slovenia

Organisation Type

Academic / Research and VET Institutions

Business Support Organisation

Company with 250 or more employees

Consumer Organisations

Cultural and Heritage Organisations

Destination Management & Marketing Organisations

EU Institutions

Financial Institutions and Investors

Industry Associations and Chambers of Commerce

International Organisations

Local Authorities

Media / Journalist Organisations

National authorities

Networks and Federations / Confederations

NGOs / Non-profits

Regional Authorities

SMEs (a company with less than 250 employees)

Social Economy Entity

Trade Unions

  • Thematic area

    • Financing the ecosystem

    • Partnerships

    • Skills

    • Working conditions and governance

  • Interlinkages with other sectors

    • Aerospace and defence

    • Agri-food

    • Construction

    • Cultural and creative industries

    • Digital

    • Electronics

    • Energy intensive industries

    • Energy-renewables

    • Health

    • Mobility, transport, automotive

    • Proximity and social economy

    • Retail

    • Textile

    • Tourism

  • Action areas and keywords

    • Access to Finance

    • Access to technology

    • Addressing capacity and skills gap

    • Advancing gender equality and safety at work

    • Boosting digital skills by - and in the social economy

    • Certification, labelling and self-regulation

    • Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

    • Creating financial incentives and supportive regulation for green and circular social economy business models

    • Data Maturity and data driven business models

    • Data sharing, Data management & Code of Conduct

    • Economic democracy

    • Education

    • Future workplaces

    • Greening infrastructures and business operations

    • ICP rights & workers involvement

    • Industrial relation and social dialogue

    • Innovation

    • Innovation as enabler for green transition and business development in the social economy

    • Local employment

    • Local Green Deals, green business communities and citizens’ initiatives

    • New business models

    • New business models – the platform economy

    • Other action area

    • Public and private tech partnerships and support

    • Reinforcing Business to Business collaboration for greener and circular value chains

    • Social Finance

    • Supporting Digital Social Innovation & Tech for Good entrepreneurship

    • Sustainable Finance

  • Ecosystem focus

    • Social economy

  • Scope of activity

    • International

    • Local/neighbourhood

    • National

    • Regional

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The concept of European ESOP developed by the Institute for Economic Democracy and the pilot implementation process in Slovenia have so far been referenced by multiple official EU reports and other academic and policy publications.  

While the US, the UK, and Canada have all developed comprehensive frameworks for employee ownership and enabled thousands of enterprises and million of workers to transition to employee ownership, Europe lacks behind the development. Facing multifaceted challenges with industrial transition, economic stagnation, social cohesion, and economic autonomy, it is imperative that the most innovative trends are studied and guidelines on employee ownership adopted in the EU area.  

The European Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP): the main structural features and pilot implementation in Slovenia paper analyses the US ESOP model of employee ownership as one of the most successful mechanisms for scaling employee ownership and identifies which features would be useful for a European adaptation. The paper goes on to provide a technical description of the European ESOP (also the cooperative ESOP). Furthermore, it describes the Slovenian pilot implementation of the European ESOP. The paper’s implication is to provide clarity on the structural features of the dominant employee ownership models and to inform policy makers interested in promoting employee ownership in Europe.

Further background and context resources for the European ESOP: 

Documents

European Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP): the main structural features and pilot implementation in Slovenia
English
(1.13 MB - PDF)
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