Employee Ownership Association has published a report based on the findings from a survey I asked workers co-ops to respond to a few months ago, Full Report here.
Although this includes lots of other forms of employee ownership, we do get some decent references and I feel we can claim a lot of the findings for our own evidence and promtion such as:
Employee owners are more productive
EOBs are 8% - 12% more productive than non-EOBs (calculated on a Gross
Value Added per employee basis).
EOBs create more jobs
EOBs are over 50% more likely to be expanding their workforce than
non-EOBS (64% of EOBs increased employee headcount in the last five
years, compared to 41% of non-EOBs).
EOBs do more to protect EOBs employee quality of life
EOBs are more likely to offer flexibility in contracted hours (61% vs 36%), allow employees to work remotely (84% vs 47%) and almost 3 times more likely to support career breaks or sabbaticals (47% vs 16%).
EOBs share more of the value that employees generate
Dividends/bonuses are more than twice as large in EOBs than non-EOBs.
EOBs offer greater job security
Employees at EOBs are five times less likely to be made redundant
in the last three years compared to non-EOBs (that figure goes
up to eight time less likely for smaller firms).
Findings specifically about worker cooperatives
Coops tend to place more emphasis than other ownership types on encouraging fully democratic employee participation with 94% enabling employees to influence strategic organisational decision making
via all-employee votes (vs 47% at EOTs and 35% at directly owned models).
While all EOB models are more likely to provide a greater range of policies supporting employee health and wellbeing than non-EOBs, coops are the most likely to have policies such as taking a career break or sabbatical (60%); providing flexibility in contracted hours (93%); having a ‘right to disconnect’ policy in place (47%); and implementation of remote or hybrid
working (93%).
Since adopting the model, coops are the most likely to have increased their focus on environmental sustainability issues and given back to the local community. Coops are also the most likely to have 50%+ of their supplier be small and medium sized businesses, and voluntary, community or social enterprises.