What does E.S.O.P. mean?

Part of the American dream is to own your own business. Almost everyone would like to achieve this goal, but circumstances make it difficult. We at Partners have decided that all of the employees of our company should enjoy the benefits of ownership. The founders made a commitment to share the ownership rights and responsibilities with all of the employees. From the beginning, we established an E.S.O.P. to facilitate that commitment.

"E.S.O.P." means Employee Stock Ownership Plan. This is a specialized method of ownership that is tightly regulated by the U.S. Department of Labor and the I.R.S. It provides us with the vehicle to distribute profits to the employees of Partners so that they can use those profits to become stockholders of the corporation. Companies choose E.S.O.P. ownership because they believe that the long term best interests of the company can be achieved by ensuring that the employees are involved, committed, and happy. We have had extremely low employee turnover, with high levels of satisfaction because as owners, our employees not only share in the rewards, they also share in the responsibilities of ownership.

As with the benefits, the responsibilities of ownership are significant. This can be seen best in our management style. We are team oriented, with primary performance responsibility belonging to the employees most able to affect the outcome. Whenever possible, we sell in teams and we perform the administrative tasks in self-directed teams. As owners, we all know what must be done. We know that our customers set the standards exceptionally high. If we are to be successful, it is up to each of us to exceed those standards. Because we have worked together, we have succeeded!