How Empowering Your Employees Helps Improve Business
Advocates of Employee Ownership Believe Better Jobs Build a Stronger, More Diverse Economy

As U.S. companies outsource or offshore jobs to cut costs, the relationship between employees and employers suffers. The “gig economy” reflects the growing number of U.S. workers categorized as independent contract workers for hire, and unions, which once were workers’ strongest advocates, have seen their ranks and power erode.
These changes, plus growing wealth and income disparity, are renewing interest in worker-ownership models that are more inclusive and share wealth more broadly. These business structures can range from simple stock-sharing programs to worker-owned and worker-governed cooperatives. Below are the stories behind three such businesses.

Team Players Always Win
Thinking long-term. Acting like a team player. Caring for the customers. Showing ownership mentality.
While any business would be lucky to have employees with those qualities, they’re a priority when Technicians for Sustainability (TFS) looks to hire. Inclusion and empowerment always have been part of the Tucson-based solar energy installation company’s mission, but they became official values when they company moved to employee ownership in 2017.
“We believe that employees who care deeply about what they do contribute to the profits, so they should have a share,” says Kevin Koch, who with his wife, Nicole, originally owned the company.
TFS and other Certified B Corporations that care about their employees’ well-being beyond the workday are setting the bar higher by joining B Lab’s Inclusive Economy Challenge, which allows them to set and work toward goals related to themes including family-friendly practices, equity in the workplace and shared ownership. In the process, they create businesses and communities that are better for everyone.
Click here to read the full story of how TFS shifted to employee ownership.
Where Having a Job Means Having a Say in the Business

Worker cooperatives — a form of co-op where workers have a stake in the ownership, profits and management of the enterprise — are seeing a resurgence amid those weary of a concentration of corporate power, stagnant wages and wealth inequality.
The people creating new worker co-ops are from far-flung backgrounds and work in varied industries. But they’re all driven by a similar desire to create more equitable workplaces that offer opportunities for employees to grow professionally and create wealth.
For James Razsa, a worker-owner at Democracy Brewing in Boston, the worker co-op model is a more solutions-based alternative to “fighting problems and bad bosses.”
“We’re hoping to be an example of something people would want to belong to and be a part of,” he says. “We’re also representing what folks could think of as their dream business.”
Leaving the Hierarchy Behind
As its workforce culture and core values evolved, Northwest Permanente (NWP) decided it was time to change its corporate structure. Founded as a physician-owned and physician-led professional corporation, NWP became a Certified B Corporation in 2016 — and since then its board of directors has worked to identify gaps and opportunities among its 1,700 employees.

They’re looking to fill one of those gaps by expanding shareholdership to all employee care providers. Currently, physicians are eligible for shareholdership within three to five years, and about 800 are shareholders.
The process of expanding ownership shares to more employees means the organization had to change its bylaws and articles of incorporation and create a new share class — tasks that also will serve NWP as a participant in the B Corp Inclusive Economy Challenge.
Click here to learn more about NWP’s move to build its diversity, equity and inclusion.
Read more stories of people using business as a force for good in B the Change, or sign up to receive the B the Change Weekly newsletter for more stories like the one above, delivered straight to your inbox.

