In 2017, the Menke Group had the distinct pleasure of helping Philadelphia-based insurance brokers and consultants Graham Company buck industry trends by converting to 100% employee ownership.
Now, in a terrific new article published on Property Casualty 360, Graham’s VP of Human Resources Karen Boyle looks back on their first three years as an ESOP company, from their initial rollout to the way their ESOP has helped them weather the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Graham Company announced their 100% employee ownership plan in 2017
“As Graham celebrates 60 years in business, the ESOP ensures loyal and dedicated employees are taken care of financially and that the business will continue to thrive under the same values that have served employees and clients so well,” Boyle writes.
She describes the process that Graham went through of ensuring that every one of their employee-owners felt like they had the ability to translate their ownership into action.
“We slowly started to see “pockets of change” appear in different departments and on different teams as employees took ownership to improve their individual pieces of the business.”
While an ESOP can make a company employee-owned on paper, creating a true culture of employee ownership takes work; it requires active, intentional measures to help employees at every level of an organization understand what it means to have a stake in the company’s future. Putting in that effort, though, can have a profound effect on the company as a whole.
Boyle explains how Graham built—and continues to build—this ownership mentality on top of its already strong company culture, including creating a team for just that purpose:
This [employee ownership] culture also requires all employees — not just executives or senior managers — to hold each other accountable. One thing we discovered as we started our ESOP journey is that not every employee was trained in these types of soft skills, so we’re working to roll out training modules for all of our staff to learn about topics like accountability, giving and receiving feedback, responsiveness, effective meetings and more: everything that will help them “think like an owner.”
As part of this, we launched an innovation team and tasked them to start creating efficiencies across all of our departments. If an employee discovers an issue or something they think could be working better, we encourage them to bring it to the innovation team so we can identify areas for improvements or implement new technologies to better the client experience.
Discussing how their ESOP helped Graham Company respond to the COVID-19 crisis, Boyle cites the October 2020 Rutgers University study that we recently discussed here, showing that ESOP firms have outperformed other firms during the pandemic in terms of job protection and worker safety.
“We are proud that we have been able to weather the storm of an unpredictable year and continue to be true strategic partners to our clients as they navigate these uncharted waters,” she writes.
Read Boyle’s full article about Graham Company here.
Want to find out what employee ownership could mean for your business? Contact us today to find out.
Menke & Associates, Inc. has helped over 3,500 companies successfully transition to employee ownership. Our holistic ESOP approach enables a positive outcome for the company, its employees and its shareholders. We believe ownership is powerful.
