How Teamswork assists ESOPs and other types of employee-owned businesses
There are over 11,000 companies with Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) in the United States today. Are you providing your employee-owners with the knowledge and tools help them to think and perform like the owners they are? The President of Teamswork, Randy Rowland, has unique experience in the creation and leadership of ESOPs. He uses this experience to focus his broader skills on the exciting opportunities that exist in an environment of employee ownership.

Randy is currently on the Board of Overton Gear & Tool in Chicago, a 100% employee owned company. In 1990 he established an ESOP at Bertholon-Rowland Corp. (BR), making the company 100% employee owned. As CEO of BR, Randy and the other employee-owners grew the company from a single office insurance brokerage into a national enterprise with offices around the country. Merely sharing ownership did not create the cohesive team that brought about this growth. Much effort was devoted to educating those new to business ownership on how to:

• Understand their role in the organization
• Understand the roles of everyone else in the organization
• Understand the impact that their work has on the efforts of others.
• Measure their success and that of the company as a whole
• Unlock the creativity that lies within each of us, thus making every employee a “solution provider.”
• Participate in setting goals for their functional area of the organization

In short, how to think like an owner!

Underlying all these new ways of conceiving one's role at BR was training. Training not just for each job function, but training that gave every employee a greater understanding of who they were, their preferences for work style and communication, and the preferences of others they worked with. In this fashion, employees could communicate clearly, and gained a new appreciation for the efforts and contribution of others.