When I first heard the term ‘employee ownership’, I’ll admit that there was a slight bit of panic and confusion: would we all be expected to put in some of our own money and ‘buy out’ the company? I had just taken out a mortgage on a new home: I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to afford any financial contributions and would therefore be excluded from this aspect of the company’s future.
It turns out I had nothing to worry about. We were provided with the answers to all our questions at a very helpful and informative all-staff meeting, in which the entire process was explained in detail. Very little was going to be required on our part, other than providing our consent and electing an employee trustee. I wasn’t going to lose out on any money or stake in the company’s future. If anything, the opposite has turned out to be true, in that I am now arguably more invested in the company’s future than I was before – and I didn’t have to spend a penny. The trust essentially owns the company on behalf of the employees, meaning that as long as there is a willing group of trustees (and barring any drastic unforeseen circumstances), there will be Prepress Projects Limited.
Despite being a landmark moment in the life of the company, with a lot going on behind the scenes to make it possible, very little has actually changed in the day-to-day employee-level operations. Walking into our office, I doubt you’d notice that anything has changed – we’re still the same people, working with our usual clients and providing the same high-quality service that we are renowned for. That has not been affected by the change to becoming employee owned.
What has changed is our mindset. We now have the assurance that the work we’re doing has the potential to be long lasting, and won’t just disappear when Helen and David decide to step back to enjoy their well-earned retirement. That would have placed us in an undesirable and precarious situation, one that I’m sure we’re all glad to have avoided. In these challenging and uncertain times, the reassurance we now have that Prepress is secure, and therefore so are our jobs, cannot be underestimated. That is what being part of an employee-owned company means to me.