Your Work Friends | Fresh Insights on the Now and Next of Work

Ownership Works: When All Employees Own a Piece of The Upside w/ Anna-Lisa Miller

• Francesca Ranieri

Share episode

Send us a text

Why are we still treating wealth-building at work like a VIP perk?

Senior executives have long enjoyed equity as part of their compensation.  But what happens when everyone gets a piece of the upside?

This week, we sit down with Anna-Lisa Miller, Executive Director of Ownership Works, a nonprofit partnering with companies and investors to expand broad-based employee ownership - creating real financial stability for workers and driving stronger business performance for employers.

📈 Here’s the wild part:
Shared ownership isn’t a feel-good perk. It’s delivering life-changing payouts —
helping employees pay off debt, buy homes, build generational wealth, and finally get out from under the daily squeeze that 1 in 4 American workers are living in.

In this conversation, we get into:

  • How equity for all employees actually works (it’s simpler than you think)
  • Why private equity has become an unlikely accelerant of inclusive wealth-building
  • The cultural shift that happens when workers feel, think, and act like owners
  • What CEOs gain when they stop treating employees as a cost and start treating them as partners
  • Why empathy + transparency are becoming future-of-work leadership superpowers

This movement is already proving what many of us believe:
When companies win, workers should too.

And Anna-Lisa? She’s a powerhouse — and the daughter of a badass immigrant mom who built the American dream the hard way. This work is deeply personal.

Listen in to hear how shared ownership could redefine what’s possible for millions of workers - and for the companies bold enough to lead the way.

About Anna-Lisa

  • Anna-Lisa Miller is the founding Executive Director of Ownership Works. She is responsible for the organization’s strategy, key partnerships, growth, and overall impact. With a career deeply rooted in expanding shared ownership, advancing racial equity, and driving systemic change, Anna-Lisa is a recognized leader in the nonprofit sector. She brings extensive experience in building organizations, designing impactful programs, and forging partnerships that deliver lasting social and economic benefits to communities. 

More about Ownership Works: 

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.

Thanks for listening!

Hey! We love new friends! Connect with us!

SPEAKER_00:

I think it improves the dignity of work to engage with employees as true business partners to improve the company's performance because now everyone benefits.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to your work, friends. I'm Mel Platt. And I am Francesca Ronieri. And we break down the now and next of work so you stay ahead. Francesca, who did we just meet with?

SPEAKER_03:

We met with Annalisa Miller, who's the executive director of Ownership Works. If you haven't heard of Ownership Works, it's a nonprofit organization that partners with companies and investors to provide all employees with the opportunity to build wealth at work mainly through equity, which is a big deal. Two key words there: all employees and equity. Mel, what did you think of this conversation?

SPEAKER_01:

I absolutely loved it. We're trying to identify these stories that highlight people who are doing work that makes work clear, durable, and human, our whole ethos. And what they're doing is really lifting up every professional who's struggling through shared ownership. And their goal of creating 20 billion in wealth in the next 10 years is that goal. And they're on track at 11 billion. That to me is so impactful, and how that's going to change communities and what's possible. I was really inspired by this conversation.

SPEAKER_03:

Inspired is just the great word for it. What ownership works is doing is game-changing because it really helps to level the playing field and get people over that hump of scarcity, which we know, as Annalisa mentioned, one in four people in the US are struggling with. The company is inspiring. Annalisa is inspiring. And when you listen, you'll also find out that her mom was badass and also equally inspiring.

SPEAKER_01:

With that, here's Annalise More.

SPEAKER_03:

All right, Annalisa, thanks so much for joining us today. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00:

It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

We're here to talk about shared ownership and ownership works. Mel and I talk to a lot of different folks, and what we're always looking for is where is work going? What are the future trends? Shared ownership came up as something that we really wanted to focus on because not a lot of folks are aware of what this is. And so I want to start by asking you how would you define what shared ownership is to someone who has never heard of it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I think the simplest way to explain it, most folks are familiar with the fact that senior executives of a company typically receive company stock as part of their pay package. And what shared ownership does is it extends equity participation from the CEO all the way down to the front line. So instead of just a handful of folks having equity and ownership in that company, now everyone does. And so when the company is sold, which often happens these days, everyone gets a piece of the upside. And this is really meaningful because the profits from the sale of a company, it's a significant source of savings and wealth for executives. And so we can open up that opportunity to workers at all level of a company. We can break completely new ground for avenues for workers to build up a nest egg and a little bit of savings and wealth for their family.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Why do you think this is gaining traction, especially now, or when we're looking at the future of work?

SPEAKER_00:

I think that there's kind of two sides to the argument for employee ownership. One side is the financial impact on employees. And I think there's increasing interest in the model because of the level of financial procurity facing so many workers. One in four workers report living paycheck to paycheck. So that means folks are just able to cover their household expenses if that and really don't have anything left over to save. So that really aligns with data coming out of the Federal Reserve, showing that 40% of workers don't have$400 in cash to cover an emergency expense. So that means folks are relying on credit cards if they have access to cover emergencies, which can come with huge costs in terms of interests. And then when you look at various studies, they place the sort of medium amount of emergency savings between$500 to$1,000 for households in the US. So folks are struggling. And that's really coming from the fact that people are just not earning enough in their paychecks to be able to meet their expenses and save to weather an emergency, let alone retirement. So there's a lot of folks in the country that are looking for ways to address this issue. And there's many pathways to addressing it, and many ideas should be on the table. Employee ownership has really stood out to me as this incredibly viable but underutilized tool to help workers build up some financial stability. As I mentioned, that ability to include equity participation for the entire workforce. What we're seeing in the companies that implement these programs is workers receiving payouts that are around six months to a year, sometimes a year plus two years of salary in one chunk. So compare that to$500 or$1,000 in a bank account to cover an emergency expense or nothing at all. That is an incredible change in financial circumstances overnight. And one that I think a lot of people are very interested in expanding across the country. That sounds freaking life-changing for people. Life-changing. It's incredible. I hope you can share with your listeners a couple of the videos that we have where the companies are sold and the announcement is made to employees about the payouts that they're going to receive. And you just have goosebumps and tears are welling up in your eyes because you see the difference this is going to make for employees. And you see this like relief on people's face too. This like joy and instant relief. Oh my gosh, I can pay off that debt. Oh my gosh, I can pay for my kids to go to school. And those are the incredible examples that we see families, single moms caring for their kids on their own, and their parents are able to buy a house. One of the largest sources of generational wealth in this country, which is getting harder and harder. Folks are paying off their parents' mortgage, which is huge when you look at the tiny amount of retirement savings that people have in this country, not having to pay a mortgage or potentially do something like a reverse mortgage, is a huge win for a family. You got folks able to put away money to pay for their kids' education in the future. It's just, it's just amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

We talked about this on the pod. I grew up in a very low socioeconomic environment and struggled with that in my own family day to day. And Francesca and I have talked about this often, like how that impacts you as a person. So even just being able to go to the grocery store and not think about how much something costs is a huge deal for families. When you think about, I don't have to think about that. I can just get the groceries that I need to feed my family, or I don't have to think about all those workarounds, just those little micro decisions, everyday decisions that you have to make. And there's a ton of employees who are on public benefits because their own paycheck doesn't pay enough for them to even be able to, as we've seen recently with the snap paws and everything else. So if you're an employee who's also in that space, what a relief to be able to just buy groceries, what you need to feed your family. Like that's a huge deal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Huge. It's huge. I'm smiling because I can absolutely relate from my own childhood, from periods where my mom experienced an incredible squeeze working multiple jobs. And I remember my sister, my older sister managing the budget for groceries and the sort of amount of thought that would go into building that grocery list and then taking things off the shelf exactly to make sure you had enough to pay. Yeah, Mel, it's real duty.

SPEAKER_01:

Or like your old car suddenly one thing goes wrong, and now you don't have transportation. It's like that spiral effect that happens for families. And this is just a really nice viable option to give them that ability to get out of that. That's such a huge shift for employees to think about. Oh wow, I am an owner in this organization. And so I'm curious what you've noticed about what changes for employees once they know they have skin in the game. What have you noticed even culturally within the organization when that exists?

SPEAKER_00:

So we're really transparent with folks that just sharing equity participation with employees is not going to change too much at a company. Now, I've been to the launch of one of these programs before, and the CEO does an amazing job planning this announcement and a celebratory event. And the employees all get the news. You're all part owners of this company. And there's like excitement, but also a lot of confusion. What do you mean? What does that mean for me? And is this real? And so it takes time and effort to transition from granting equity participation to an entire workforce to employees feeling, thinking, and acting like owners. But when a management team has a really thoughtful plan for how to make that transition happen and build that ownership culture, we see dramatic shifts in how folks are showing up at work. So some of the common shifts that happen at a company with employees is an increased employee engagement. We recommend to all the companies that launch these programs, if they're not already measuring engagement, they absolutely should. There's so many important insights that you can get from employees around how to improve your business and workplace conditions. And so when employee ownership is implemented and a management team is building that culture, we often see employees are more engaged. We see quit rates start to go down as employees feel more engaged and connected to the company as they see that they're going to benefit from their hard work in this additional way. That becomes a real bond and tie to the company. So you see the quit rates drop, cross-team collaboration start to go up as maybe two different sites that might have been competing in terms of incentives tied to revenue goals or something. Now they're seeing that it's not just the performance of their individual location that matters. They all stand to benefit from the overall performance of the business. And so you see collaboration and sharing of best practices between plants and sites, an increase in employee-led ideation and problem solving, as I mentioned early on. Frontline employees know where the business is losing money. It's funny, one of the questions I often get from executives when they think about launching a program like this, because one of the sort of hallmarks is that you share with employees more transparently how the company's performing as one of the sort of tenants of being an owner. It's important to know how we are doing, where are we at. And then I often get the question well, isn't that going to really stress everyone out? And isn't that going to impact engagement? And we often say, like, they already know. Like folks who are on the front line, they probably have a sense if sales are down, if there aren't as many customers, if there's returns or deliveries are late, like the employees know. And leveraging an ownership program to bring employees in on the problem-solving journey can be incredibly powerful. It not only helps the company perform better, but it improves the overall corporate culture. And I think it improves the dignity of work to engage with employees as true business partners on this shared journey to improve the company's performance because now everyone benefits. So those are some of the changes we start to see at companies who do this.

SPEAKER_01:

I really love that because it breaks down those silos. Like it's not you when we lose, it's you when we win together. That's such a shift when you think about all of the silos that exist usually in cultures. Do you have a story that just gives you goosebumps about a shift that you saw happen?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. Charter Next Generation manufacturing company in the Midwest, led by an incredible CEO, Kathy Bullhouse. But before I get into that, I want to just position shared ownership as a tool. It's a way to form a foundation to build an ownership culture around it. The culture really does start from the top. And so for these programs to be successful, the CEO and the management team really have to internalize and be excited about the potential for building a culture like that. And if you don't have that kind of excitement or orientation on the management team, an ownership program is probably not going to change much at the company. But when you do, really exciting things can happen. So to our next generation, Kathy Bullhouse is an incredibly successful CEO. She took the company from a valuation of about$50 million all the way up to$4.5 billion over about, I think about 10 years. So this was a very high-performance company. Kathy is very open about her life and her background and coming from humble beginnings, has always wanted to give back and find ways to do that. And so when she learned of the opportunity to launch a shared ownership program when she was acquired by KKR and Leonard Green, when CG was acquired, she was so excited about the ability to create this opportunity for her team. And she used it as the basis to really start to build an ownership culture with more intention. And that involved measuring employee engagement for the first time. And when Kathy got her scores back, she was quite surprised because CNG was performing very well. So you would think that the employees would be quite engaged, but actually she came back in the bottom quartile for employee engagement for manufacturing. And it really hurt her to know that the employees were feeling that sense of disconnection from the organization and for their work. And so Kathy set out on a listening tour. She went to all of the plants in the Midwest for Charter Next Generation and started listening to employees and asking, what's going on? What are the challenges that you're facing? And she started to hear directly that part of the reason why engagement was low is that they were stuck in this spiral of being understaffed, hiring new folks, not investing enough in training so people would quit. And the longtime employees were just getting burnt. And one of the questions on the engagement survey is I have the tools I need to do my job well. And that was one of the low-scoring ones because folks didn't have the colleagues. They didn't have the team there to do what they needed to do. And so Kathy really listened and they shut down an entire production line so that they could focus on training and staffing up. And in a three-year period, they saw their employee engagement increase from the about the 30th percentile up to the 80th percentile, which is incredible. They saw their quit rate go down by 56%. And now she's really leaning into employee ownership as a way to inspire and empower employees at all levels of the company to make the place even better. And so you've got ideas coming from the front line around cost savings. So now they're 3D printing parts that they were previously playing hundreds of thousands of dollars for direct cost savings. And then they're doing things that are really powerful for their culture. So Kathy launched a podcast called Our People, Our Purpose, where she sits down and interviews employees across the company and just gets to know them as people. It's such a beautiful podcast. It's just taken an incredible company and really infused it with Kathy's brand of leadership that really combines the head and the heart. And I were really excited to see the rest of their journey unfold. They're private equity owned, so they'll sell again in a few years and excited to see the shared wealth that will come out of that for the employees.

SPEAKER_01:

That is such a powerful story. We had a guest, Zach Mercurio, who wrote The Power of Mattering. And what I love about this story you just shared is it shows that she really cares. And just being able to interview people at every level and bring them into the discussion shows everyone that they matter as part of the work, too. Really boosting up their who they are, what they do, how they contribute, and the impact that they make is super powerful. It's a really cool example.

SPEAKER_00:

A lot of times people ask us, what do I need to do to build an ownership culture? And there's a couple of pillars that we focus on. One is sharing knowledge, which I mentioned have employees understand how the company creates value and how are you performing to date. Another is to share responsibility and so bring employees in on continuous improvement and problem solving, delegate decision making, for example. But the third big pillar is to show care. And that's really about obviously extending equity participation. It's a huge investment in the workforce. But if you really want to have employees feel, think, and act like an owner and feel that sense of psychological and emotional ownership at work, it's really important that leaders show that they are invested in workers. And Charter Next Generation, in addition to that COP podcast, they brought in a financial wellness provider to support employees. They have upped their sort of investment in abilities for their employees to connect outside of work, to do team-building events. And so I think that those kinds of investments in the workforce are really critical to show that we people do matter and the quality of the experience at work impacts how people show up every day.

SPEAKER_01:

Creating a culture of care impacts your bottom line in terms of business performance. Like I'll double down on that, and you'll double down on your results, which shows in her trajectory, right? PE firms are typically looking at what return on value.

SPEAKER_03:

I love the correlation between if you invest in these human-centric initiatives, and if you have a CEO at the helm that is willing to go slow to go fast on it and do the right things, that's how you get return on investment.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Our founder, Pete Stavros, is taking this inquiry a step further. He's been working with professor at Stanford, Jamil Zaki, to study the relationship between empathy and company performance. And Jamil's research shows that empathy is a trait that can be built. Some people might innately be a little bit more empathetic, but it's definitely something that can be built. And when we looked at the CEOs leading companies with shared ownership, who were also seeing those improvements in turnover and engagement, they also were very high in empathy. And so we've been thinking as we evolve as an organization and we support leaders on this journey, how can we support people in building empathy so they understand what workers across the company are experiencing and can keep that in mind as they design their employee experience and how they engage and relate to workers. So I would love to see a culture of care be a norm in the future. That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, I want to back up for a second too and talk about ownership works. You all pop into companies and then And roll out shared ownership programs. Walk us through like what do you do when you go into a company who do you typically work with?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. So we help companies and the investors who own these companies structure and implement holistic shared ownership programs. So that has three core components. The first is to size and structure the equity participation plan itself. This part can seem the scariest to current owners, senior executives. You raise the idea of thousands of employees having stock equity participation. And they're like, oh my gosh, that's way too much work. We're never going to be able to administer that kind of program. And the model that we deploy is incredibly streamlined. It removes a lot of the administrative burden for companies and for employees. And so that has removed a lot of the friction and encouraged companies to participate. So we help them structure the plan, we help them size the plan. So these are free and incremental grants of equity participation to employees. Some companies have employee stock purchase programs where you can buy stock at a discount. And those are fantastic, but it can be a challenge with someone living paycheck to paycheck to be able to set aside money to buy stock of the company where they work. And so these are free grants. And so we work with the company to make sure that we're able to carve out a portion of equity for the broad employee base that's meaningful for employees and also affordable for the company. So we help with that exercise. Once the plan has been sized and structured, then we work directly with the management team on creating a roadmap for building an ownership culture. And so that really involves getting a sense of what's the current culture at the company? What's your current value creation plan? What are your current goals and priorities? And how do we embed ownership into that? So it doesn't become a separate initiative or just a communications campaign, but it really gets integrated into how the company is being operated. There's some sort of table stakes things we recommend, like doing quarterly owner meetings and making sure you educate employees on fundamental concepts around equity and value creation. It's important that employees understand the way their particular job connects to the performance of the company rather than just having financial goals, which can feel a bit nebulous and saying, okay, we want EBITDA to be this and revenue to be that. We recommend that companies pick operational metrics that will obviously impact profitability and revenue and cost, but pick operational metrics that are more accessible to the employee base. And so for a manufacturing company that might look like scrap, might look like on-time delivery, might look like safety. For another business, it might be customer satisfaction, MPS scores, making them accessible so that people can see how they show up. And so we work with management teams to help them identify the metrics that matter, how they're going to engage the entire workforce, how they're going to educate people, and how are they going to share the performance with the company with more transparency. The third pillar of the work is on financial wellness. The ownership programs that we help structure, we often do this in the context of companies that are owned by private equity firms, but employee ownership can work in many ownership structures. One of the advantages of doing it in the private equity context is that there is a defined liquidity event that will happen in roughly five to seven years when the company is sold. So that's where that employee can get that lump sum payout, which can be so incredibly valuable. But we all know that people have day-to-day financial needs in their interim. And so we work with management teams to bring in complementary financial wellness programs like emergency hardship funds, emergency savings programs. There's emergency loan programs that have no interest and then utilize the ability to repay that loan. They pair it with financial counseling and try to transition folks. If you can pay back the loan, you may have more ability to save than you realize and leveraging that to transition. Those are the three pillars of what we do, in addition to what we call movement building. And so I get asked a lot of the time, like, why are you a nonprofit? If you're just providing consulting and advisory support, why are you nonprofit? And I tell people companies aren't exactly sitting around thinking, oh, gee, if only someone could just help me give away equity, right? So it's like we have to really make the case for folks to do this. Show why it's good for society, show why workers need it, and show why it's good for business. And so that takes a tremendous amount of outreach and awareness raising. We have a large partner consortium of over a hundred partners, including 38 private equity firms. We have a data program where we're collecting data on the business and social impacts of shared ownership, and then a storytelling function where we're elevating these stories so that other business leaders can see what's possible to inspire them to do the same.

SPEAKER_03:

Awesome. Yeah. Tactical question. Do you find that this work actually helps drive them to think about ownership as their EVP or as a big part of their EVP? It feels like it's a twofer, Annalisa. It's like we're giving you ownership, but it's also like getting your caca together in terms of your employee value proposition. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_00:

You're definitely touching on something. The companies we work with, they're at many stages of maturity when it comes to their approach to company culture, employee engagement. Some of them have never measured employee engagement and don't have a particularly regimented approach to people metrics. And some are much more advanced and have great internal comms and employee education. I would say, yes, I think that a lot of what we're recommending is applicable to just what makes a good engaged culture and a strong employee value proposition for sure. And the team that works with management teams can definitely guide folks to help them level up in ways that are more fundamental than just creating an ownership culture for sure.

SPEAKER_02:

Question on the personal, which is why this for you? Why is this your craft, your career journey?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I've always wanted to find a way to give back. I've always been really motivated by the ability to make the world a better place. I'm an immigrant. I moved here when I was six years old. And I've just been so fascinated by the ability to have upward mobility in this country, the allure of the American dream. My family experienced that. My mom was a single mom from the time I was eight on. She was a nurse, and she was able to eventually buy a home and retire with dignity. But it was like incredibly hard for her to do that even then, right? Property values were way lower, and your money went much further in the 80s and the 90s. But still, just to buy a home and put a roof over our heads and save a little bit for the future, there were times where my mom had three jobs and worked constantly, and we never ever saw her. So I was in this state of seeing firsthand the ability for a family to achieve upward mobility. All of the kids went to college and we did it. We did the thing. I think in many ways, like we experienced the American Dream. Then I also saw firsthand how hard that was for my mother and the burden and the strain that it placed on my family in many ways. We grew up fast as kids. We had a lot of responsibility. My mom took on a lot of risk. She left us home alone a lot. We didn't have health insurance. She couldn't fix really critical things when they broke, like hot water heaters. There's a lot of sacrifice involved, that kind of precarity. I don't want it to be so hard for other people. And it's just getting harder. And that's what breaks my heart, the sort of narrative of the bootstraps. And if you just work hard, you'll find your way. My mother couldn't run those plays now. It just wouldn't, it just wouldn't work. She would not be able to buy a home. She would not be able to save for retirement. It just wouldn't work. And the things that she was able to afford for us would be out of reach. So I think about families today, and I just feel very compelled to try to find a way to make things a little bit better for folks. I think there's a lot of systemic reasons why so many families are struggling day to day and a lot of interventions that could help from uh education's tax policy, employee ownership is just one tool in the toolbox, but it is so tangible. And that's why I am like laser focused on this because I'm like, it is money in people's pockets, like tangible cash the check. It is there, nest egg for your family, emergency savings fund for your family. And I think about what that could have done for my family, for my mom, the amount of stress that would have relieved. She could have fixed the water heater. She could have not debated, do I take my daughter who just had third degree burns to the hospital or not? Because we don't have health insurance. Like these are the kinds of trade-offs that families are making that I wish no one had to make. So that's why I'm compelled to do this work. She was badass. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm just gonna brag for her for a second because she was the immigrant. She came here, she had me when she was 43. When she was and when she was working, her credentials didn't transfer to the US. So she has to retake all of her licensing exams. So she essentially entered the US job market in her late 40s, early 50s at an entry-level job salary, had to work multiple jobs, and amidst all of this, managed to send three kids to Ivy League schools. Which, like, I can't even get my head around how this woman did that, and in many ways create the illusion of a much more stable life than like the numbers should suggest. I mean, yeah, she was bad.

SPEAKER_01:

You've already worked with 167 plus companies providing share ownership to over 250,000 employees and have delivered over 1.3 billion in wealth to those workers. And by 2030, I saw that ownership works is aiming to create 20 billion in wealth. What does that look like? What's the path to get there?

SPEAKER_00:

That 1.3 billion is just what is already in workers' pockets from equity that's been converted to cash from liquidity events. But we're actually projecting from that 167 companies overall, over$11 billion in wealth. So$1.3 that's been paid out and over$10 billion in future liquidity events. So we're on track to hit that$20 billion goal because we're anticipating another 35 to 40 companies will launch programs each year, if not more. So we're really excited about the momentum that's behind this movement. Part of that's coming from the fact that we partner with private equity firms who the decision of one investor to share ownership can impact dozens of companies and thousands of employees. So it becomes a faster way to scale a new concept. And we work with 38 private equity firms who've been just incredible partners in this journey. They are very familiar with using equity as a way to drive alignment and often give equity to senior management. And so this logic of extending it to the entire workforce and getting everyone rolling in the same direction has resonated. We're still early stage. We're hoping they'll continue to roll out these programs and that more and more private equity firms will join the movement. And we started to work with public companies as well. So we worked with Lineage last year to help them launch a shared ownership program concurrently with their IPO. And we've started to work with some family-owned businesses, which will have to be a slightly different model for companies that are not expected to sell. It'll probably look a little bit more like profit sharing. But either way, it's a way for companies to benefit outside of their typical wages and salary, which is exciting. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_01:

And I saw also recently in press release that you're going global. Japan just launched too. So what's the plan? Global takeover? No, just kidding.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, we definitely want to see this as far and wide as possible. So many companies are multinational these days. And so to launch a program that's truly inclusive and broad-based means including employees all over the world. We work with some investors and companies that are headquartered in Europe. Japan is our first sort of official international affiliate. And what we found there is there's so much receptivity towards this model. There's an alignment with cultural values and corporate norms there, continuous improvement has been sort of part of the corporate ethos. And since Toyota really made that a centerpiece of business performance, asking for employee ideas and participation is relatively common. And so this idea of, you know, an inclusive workforce resonated. There's also a tremendous need. Gallup tracks employee engagement across the globe. And there's probably some cultural aspects showing up in this data, but they show that engagement in Japan is very low. Folks see this and including employees in the ability to build savings and wealth and having more participatory work culture. It just felt obvious to the folks that we spoke to in Japan, which was very exciting. So lots of demand for the model.

SPEAKER_03:

If I'm a CEO, if I'm a board member, if I'm the head of comp and Ben at a company and I want to start thinking about shared ownership, where do I start?

SPEAKER_00:

First, you should reach out to us at info at ownershipworks.org to learn more. But I think the first question to ask yourself is would a more engaged, productive, and stable workforce benefit your business? And I think if the answer to that is yes, it's definitely time to examine if this could be a model that's right for you. I mentioned earlier that one of the things that scares people away is the complexity. And like I said, we've solved for that in many ways. And so the fear that this is going to be too much work for your HR team is processing grants and comings and goings, we have a really streamlined model that can help with that. So I think the question is really twofold. It's do you think this model can help you achieve your goals? Is it philosophically aligned with how you and your management team lead? Can it work out from a financial perspective? Can you allocate enough equity so that the grants are meaningful for employees and affordable for the company? And if those three things are yes, then I think it's worth really exploring and seeing if this is a feasible strategy for your workforce. In addition to what it can do for the company, there's also a lot of leaders who see it as a part of their legacy of really taking care of their employees and investing in their community as well. The amount of pride I mentioned some of the videos where we show the employees reacting to the payouts, but you also see the executives reacting and a lot of times saying this is the best thing they've ever done in their career. If any of that inspires you, I think it's worth taking a second look at employee ownership.

SPEAKER_03:

We like to do a little thing called rabbit round to get to know you better.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, let's do it.

SPEAKER_03:

All right. These are meant to be like short answers, but sometimes it ends up being a really rich conversation. So whatever you feel free to share. First question, it's 2030.

SPEAKER_00:

What does work look like? I think the most obvious answer is that AI is going to be deeply embedded in all aspects of our work. And we don't exactly know how it's going to transform work, but a lot of the professional services firms, I think, will have fewer jobs for entry-level positions, as research and analysis gets more automated. I think skilled workforces and care work will see a continued demand for jobs in those areas, both due to the rising aging population and the care work. And then on the skilled services side, as retirement set in and then shifts in needs as technological advancements sink in. There's always hysterics when new technology comes in around job displacement and then net loss in jobs. And what we typically see is that these jobs are replaced in one way or another as we adapt. I think with AI, it's really going to depend on how quickly we are able to adapt to these changes and train people for the jobs for the future. I also think that as AI impacts how we work, that there could be the need for folks to have multiple jobs, or I think very much a need to think about how do you complement earnings so that folks are not just relying on their salary or wages, but also able to have assets that produce income for them as well. I think that's going to be a really critical thing for us to think about for the future of work and obviously pretty connected to the work that we do at ownership works. Yeah. Those are a few reflections. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03:

I love it. I was just listening to a podcast with Ashwatha Motoran, who was talking about we should potentially be investing in collectibles because they could be assets that not generate revenue, but keep it. And I was sitting there like collectibles and or an asset that generates revenue, like potentially equity, or of course, like rich dad, poor dad with the storage units, right? Things that do that. But I always thought investing in a laundromat or if I go the collectibles route, I'm just gonna do like old Porsche's. We'll call it a day.

unknown:

It works.

SPEAKER_00:

You could add pennies to the list, those are gonna become collectible.

SPEAKER_01:

I told my husband not to cash in our little change jar because that's gonna be worth something someday. That's your retirement smell. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03:

All right. What's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see disappear already?

SPEAKER_00:

I think this notion that a handful of really senior executives are the critical employees. They're the ones who understand how to make the business perform better. They're the ones with the best ideas, the best solutions. And I think it's such a missed opportunity. Folks who work on the front line, they know the business so well. They know where you're losing money, they know where there are inefficiencies and oftentimes have a lot of ideas around how to make things better, but no one's asking them because there's not necessarily the prevailing thought that the solutions are going to come from the front line instead of that small C-suite. And so I think it's time for us to get rid of that thinking already, there's tons of examples coming out of our work on how the frontline can move the needle for business performance. And I think that if we embrace this notion of workers as an asset that we're investing in and not a cost, that would have tremendous benefits, not just for how businesses perform, but how we relate to each other as a society as well.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Amen. That flip to investment as opposed to cost is just so huge. All right, I'm gonna flip to the more personal. What music are you listening to right now?

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm a big fan of Rosalia, a Spanish artist, and she just released a new album. So I've been listening. To that, she's got this like ethereal, haunting tone to her work, but always puts me in a really like happy, slash, relaxed place. And then I'm a massive fan of Caitronata, and he's pretty much like always on repeat. He's a Haitian DJ that makes like upbeat electronic music that I just love. So those are the two.

SPEAKER_03:

Good options. I love those. I love those. All right. What are you reading right now? Podcasts, audiobooks, count as well. What are you reading?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so I'm listening to a novel called The Wilderness, which is about five women kind of over the course of a 20-year friendship, navigating, I think, the sort of contemporary adulthood is the sort of framing for it, which I can definitely relate to. I read a lot of nonfiction, but it's it's great to disappear into a new world with fiction from time to time. So I've really been enjoying that story. I'm just like about a third in early days, more to come, but it's great so far.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, nice. I'll take that up. I love that. The ability to escape into a book or to go into a different world. Music or book stuff. It's a beautiful thing. Totally. Sometimes I do both.

SPEAKER_00:

Listen to a little music while I read.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Just layer it. We're layering it.

SPEAKER_00:

Who do you really admire? I love this question. My mother, she passed away about 14 years ago. And I was, what, 31 when she passed away. And you're younger, and I just think what comes with the territory is just a lack of perspective. As I get older, I understand just how extraordinary my mother was. And it it blows my mind what she was able to accomplish for her family, for her children, how much vision she had for the life she wanted to create that was born entirely of her own imagination and like determination that she could change the trajectory of her life because nothing about her beginnings matched the way she ended her life. As I get older, I'm able to see like her stamp is all over me. And I'm just so appreciative of what she invested in me and my siblings and just have a lot of respect and admiration for her. She's amazing. And so tell your parents that while they're still here, because I wish I had the chance as an adult to really not that 31 isn't an adult, but really tell her that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

That's freaking beautiful. Oh, that's so nice. It's so nice. I appreciate that. Yeah, that's really awesome. Yeah. God, that's amazing. Sorry, I'm getting weird up. A piece of advice that you would like everyone to know.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm a pretty serious person. I was like a really serious child. I would crack a joke and people would laugh and then I'd start to cry because I thought they were laughing at me. It's just like in my DNA. I've grown out of that, luckily, but I still carry that like serious streak in me. And I have to remind myself to just lighten up. And so I think the advice I would share is to find ways to cultivate joy and have fun, even at work, which is not something we typically associate with fun. But so much of how we experience life in the world is yes, it's our external circumstances, but it's also the mindset that we cultivate. And I try to remind myself that's really the only thing that's in my control. And so if I can just chill out, I'm only here for a short amount of time, as serious as it seems, it's really not that serious. And if I can inject like moments of levity and fun and joy in the day-to-day, like all of that adds up to just an entirely different quality of experience. So that's what I would share.

SPEAKER_03:

I don't think there's a better voice than that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Especially now. Especially now, yes. There's a lot going on. I'll just leave that there. Anyway. Here, here. Yeah. And Alisa, where can people find you or ownershipworks?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So if you go to ownershipworks.org, you can read all about us on our website. We've got our page on LinkedIn where we've got a lot of content on the organization. And then, like I mentioned, you can reach out to us at InfoAt. There's links to contact us on the website. We'd be delighted to connect and help folks figure out if this could be the right model for their business. Annalisa, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. This was such a pleasure. Appreciate the opportunity to spread the word.

SPEAKER_01:

This episode was produced, edited, and all things by us, myself, Mel Plett, and Francesca Reneri. Our music is by Pink Zebra. And if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com. But you can also join us over on LinkedIn, join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends. Bye, friends.

Head Shot

Francesca Ranieri

Co-host
Head Shot

Mel Plett

Co-host