Ownership Culture For many companies, the intangible benefits of an ESOP far outweigh the costs. The basic management structure stays the same —employees can’t fire their boss, for example — but many ESOP companies see increased worker productivity. At Dave Fox Remodeling, a 67% employee-owned company in Columbus, Ohio, specializing in remodeling, siding, and windows, president Gary Demos says the ESOP has helped dramatically boost sales since founder Dave Fox, now retired, implemented it in 1997. “We went from being about a $1.5 million company to a $6 million company, and I think it was the ownership culture that created it,” Demos says.
The firm nurtures that through company-wide meetings and an annual ESOP dinner where managers hand out employees’ stock statements. The company is currently conducting weekly seminars on the process, too. “Making everybody feel a part of that is really critical,” Demos says. “You’ve got to be totally open and honest with employees.”
Perhaps most importantly, though, was that Fox groomed Demos, who has been with the company since 1993, to take over before he left. He made Demos a vice president in 2000, four years before Demos became president in 2004. “One of the things that it really takes for this to work is to get that process started early,” Demos says.
At Mid South, Kilgore has seen that owner mentality shape the company for two decades. “Over the years, the attitude has changed a lot,” Kilgore says. “From anything as trivial as saving office supplies to an empty rental trailer sitting in the parking lot, we do something about it, because that’s money out of our pockets.”
Money that she’ll soon see as a retired former owner of the company she has worked at for more than 20 years. —Joe Bousquin is a freelance writer based in California.