SHIFT Communications knows how to motivate its employees. The company has launched an employee stock ownership plan, according to The Holmes Report, with every employee receiving a piece of the company, subject to a vesting schedule.
Co-founder and now CEO Todd Defren told The Holmes Report that although there were no immediate plans to sell the company, the move was designed to align incentives in the event of a sale sometime in the future:
?I?d like to think that this will be seen as the single most significant sign to staff that Shift management genuinely cares about their welfare, so trust in management will only improve, leading to an even happier employee base. And we hope the ESOP will motivate employees to think like owners, to care even more than they already do about client and employee retention, about profitability.?
Shift, which has offices in Boston, San Francisco and New York, is quite active in the startup space and so no doubt understands the power of equity as a motivator.
Defren explained on his blog how the shift (pun very much intended) came about:
We were on a conference call with a prospective acquirer ? Jim [Joyal, SHIFT co-founder] put the call on ?mute,? turned to me and said, ?Ya know, I?d enjoy this a whole lot more if?you?were the one buying me out.?? Thank you, Jimmy, for turning on the light bulb which lit the way.
The perorations and negotiations that followed were neither frenzied nor difficult.? They were fun.? Jim and I wanted to figure out a way that he could continue in his role as my partner, but ?take some money off the table? while also benefiting our employees.? ALL of our employees, not just the bigwigs.? An ESOP was the obvious answer.? So I got a bank, worked with umpteen lawyers, bankers, accountants and consultants and worked it all out.
Employees get a stake, Joyal gets some money, and Defren gets a firm nicely incentivized to become even more valuable. Not bad all around.
Source: http://bostinno.com/2012/08/06/shift-communications-is-giving-every-employee-stock/
monkey bread letter from santa sweet potato pie sweet potato pie twas the night before christmas norad santa epic beard man
No comments:
Post a Comment