In 2006, the Beyster Institute and the National Center for Employee Ownership launched the Innovations in Employee Ownership awards at their joint annual conference. Through sponsorship from TEOCO Corporation, the award recognizes creative ideas that help make employee ownership stronger.

Now in its second year, the award is well on its way to uncovering the best and brightest ideas from employee-owned companies across the country. At this year’s Employee Ownership Conference in San Diego in March, Cal-Tex Protective Coatings of Scherz, Texas won the grand prize. Awards were also received by New Belgium Brewing of Fort Collins, Colorado; North Highland of Atlanta, Georgia; Paychex of Rochester, New York; and Pizzagalli Construction of South Burlington, Vermont.

"This award is achieving its goal of spreading high-quality ideas in the employee ownership community and making our companies stronger, more durable, and simply more exciting,” says Loren Rogers of the National Center for Employee Ownership. “Personally, I'm thrilled not just with the quality of this year’s winners, but with their diversity. The winners include large and small companies with different types of employee ownership plans, both new and long-established; and a variety of fields, from consulting to construction.”

In addition to Rogers, the award judges were Lisa Casey of Reflexite Corporation (the 2006 grand prize winner), Martin Staubus of the Beyster Institute, and author Bill Taylor, the conference’s keynote speaker.

After the awards presentation, the conference also included a breakout session featuring representatives from the winning companies and providing an opportunity for other business leaders to get more in-depth information and ask questions.

Here’s a summary of the winners, including their winning innovations:

Cal-Tex Protective Coatings
Scherz, Texas

The 80 employee owners of Cal-Tex make aftermarket products including paint, fabric and leather sealants for automobile dealers, but their most impressive accomplishment is showing how much a small visionary company can accomplish. Rather than being simply an aspiration, the Cal-Tex statement of values and purpose actually do permeate the internal company culture and relations with customers. One of the company’s core values is humility, which management exemplifies by shifting an astounding level of decision making to the work force. Aided by intensive daily sharing of financial data, employees set their own production goals in accord with the company’s quarterly goals. Those who meet their goals gradually achieve the status of Certified Employee Owner (CEO), a status that gives them the right to attend company planning sessions regardless of their job titles. The judges wrote that “this company’s employee owners engage themselves in their company’s success profoundly and personally—the level of creativity, connection and exuberance at Cal-Tex amazed us.”

New Belgium Brewing
Fort Collins, Colorado

Some companies lead from the head, some from the heart. New Belgium Brewing does both. The company offers an emotionally rich induction ceremony for new employee owners—people share stories from their personal lives and their experience at the company. They leave the ceremony with a visceral attachment to the company and to their fellow employee owners. At the same time, the company takes a head-on, systematic approach to one of the touchiest issues in employee ownership: employee involvement in management and governance. New Belgium specifies the decision making roles and process for a number of types of decisions, and it automatically includes a member of its employee committee on the board of directors and the company’s strategic planning team.

North Highland
Atlanta, Georgia

Employee ownership is not a new idea; neither is branding. But never has a company brought the two together as powerfully or comprehensively as North Highland. The company, which provides management and technology consulting services, used an extensive process and involved employees at every step to derive its internal ESOP brand: “Own your life. Own your career. Own your company.” This brand permeates all major processes at North Highland, including employee recruitment, policy and benefit evaluation, employee communications, marketing, and training. Employee owners have a ready answer for what makes their company different, and the ubiquity of the brand has created a different work-life model that centers on the individual employee.

Paychex
Rochester, New York

The only public company among this year’s award-winners, Paychex is well-known as a provider of payroll, human resources, and benefits solutions to small and medium businesses. With over 11,000 employees and $1.6 billion in revenues, Paychex was named one of Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2007. Its multi-pronged equity compensation program includes an employee stock purchase plan, a company stock fund in its 401(k), and a broad-based stock option program that covers well over 95% of the work force. Employees take extensive advantage of the ability to invest in Paychex, and the company in turn invests in employees with award-winning employee training programs.

Pizzagalli Construction
South Burlington, Vermont

©2007 The Beyster Institute and its authors and their entities. All rights reserved.