Employee Ownership - A Path to Success
I want to provide a few thoughts on what being an employee/owner means to me. I have been in the workforce for 45 years and have worked for a fairly wide range of companies: my own one-man business, a partner in a small business, an employee in several small to medium businesses and a government department employee. I can honestly say the 15+ years I have been an employee/owner at Capture Technologies, Inc. have been the best. Not only regarding it being an employee owned company and all that means, but also the work environment and culture at Capture, and they are probably related.
I have found that an employee/owner is the best combination of being “just an employee” and an owner/partner. I am free to do my job without being encumbered with all of the business decisions and worries that being an owner brings but I also am entitled as an employee owner to voice my concern about something I see I may not like, or to make a suggestion on how to improve things, or to ask a pointed question about the way things are being done.
When I was a one-man business I was constantly juggling between sales, delivery, and admin and more often than not falling behind on at least 2 out of 3 of these responsibilities. I lost quite a few sales because I couldn’t abandon the customer I was servicing to deal with the new prospect and then to have to go home at night and do admin during family time is no fun. Not that all days were like that, but that is the nature of being a “one-man band”. That is why I decided to partner up with a husband and wife when the opportunity came along. He did sales, she admin, I handled the technical side, and we hired a couple of staff. But I remember more than once being on an install or service call, at a customer, and not able to attend an executive meeting or having to make the tough decisions on how to make payroll and also our mortgage payments. Again, we had some successful periods, but the level of stress was always high.
When I was a regular employee at a company (small or large) I did not feel that my ideas or input were actually valued or carried any real weight. I was “just an employee” who was hired to do my job and nothing more and as I wasn’t an owner it literally “wasn’t my business” how the company was run. Some obviously had better cultures than others and occasionally input from employees was listened to and at least appreciated.
Contrast this with employee-owned Capture Technologies, Inc. Yes, we are primarily expected to do our jobs to the best of our ability and support our management who have to deal with the tough business decisions; but additionally we are not only permitted, but also expected and encouraged, to speak up and provide input on how the company can do things better or to even point out things we don’t like. In my opinion, no one at Capture would be disciplined for doing that. I think the employee turnover at Capture is very low and the culture Capture Technologies, Inc has created in initiating and running the ESOP is a big part of that.
John Bamforth
Employee-Owner