Minnesota's  Leading Resource  For Information About Employee Ownership Business Models

Employee-ownership has become the most valuable aspect of our company. Our customers have long appreciated our eco-friendly services and how fairly we treat our employees. That's still true, but now that we've transitioned into a cooperative, new customers love us because we're employee-owned. Our 'close rates' have skyrocketed. I believe it's the main reason we were able to survive the worst of the pandemic, and now we're growing bigger than ever before.

~ Thomas Crouse, Happy Earth Cleaning Co-op

“As we near our firm’s 40th anniversary of becoming an employee-owned firm, our growth has been nearly ten-fold over this period. Our employee turnover has been less than half of industry average. We’ve been strong advocates of the employee-owner model across our industry, our client’s industries and across the country. Our ESOP structure, established by the vision of key corporate leaders in 1985, has been heralded as a model for many organizations across our nation…”

~ Gene Sieve, Burns & McDonnell

“Terra Firma Building and Remodeling started twenty years ago with me as the sole owner and with one employee. In 2013, thirteen years later we had 26 employees and had become known as one of the top custom remodeling firms in the Twin Cities. At that point, in 2013 we transitioned to an employee-owned worker cooperative. We had 26 employees and 8 of them became owners that year. Now, seven years later we have 28 employees and 20 of them are owners… “

~ Marty Ruddy, Terra Firma Building and Remodeling

“At JLG, we have approached the design of our company the same way we approach the design of our buildings – to stand the test of time.

Borne in 1989 and shaped by this vision of “legacy”, we transferred ownership of our organization to our employees in 2015 via a 100% S-corp ESOP. In doing so, we made manifest a deep-seated value, that what we do is more than just “a job;” it’s about building a stable and enduring company that will draw and retain really great people who will actively contribute to the long-term success of the communities we serve…”

~ Michelle Mongeon Allen, JLG Architects

“I started Harbinger Partners, an IT consulting and staffing firm, in 1999 with three non-negotiable employee objectives: the company must offer a culture that ensures all employees are delighted, benefits that exceed expectations, and employee ownership. From 1999 to early 2019, we offered stock to all salary employees – that was the only way I knew how to share in the ownership….”

~ Scott Grausnick, CEO, Harbinger Partners, Inc.