Employee Ownership Trusts: An Employee Ownership Success Story

Since its creation in 2014, the employee ownership trust (EOT) has become a widespread form of employee ownership in the UK, and has transformed the country’s employee ownership scene. Given that it is over a decade since its inception into UK legislation, and with the EOT now firmly established as a key business succession tool, it is timely to take a closer, critical look at the role, characteristics, and potential dangers of the UK EOT model. This paper will briefly outline and discuss the key characteristics of EOTs, how the EOT came about, and why it has been so successful. Using several unique data-sets of UK employee-owned businesses, it will profile key features of EOTs, and show how the flexible approach of the EOT provides the potential to sidestep many of the obstacles faced by other forms of employee ownership.