Next we look more closely at four specific types of employee ownership: the Employee Stock Ownership Plan or ESOP, the worker cooperative, equity compensation, and the employee ownership trust. We will examine how these types of employee ownership work, how they differ from one another, and their prevalence. Then we will dive deep into understanding the historic roots of modern employee ownership. By the end of this module, you will have acquired a basic understanding of four key types of employee ownership. You will be able to visualize how several companies are successfully sharing ownership with employees. And you will understand how some ideas supporting employee ownership and profit-sharing trace back to the earliest founding of the United States, while the cooperative tradition has roots in Black and marginalized community experiences. Throughout this module, we will learn from several different scholars and experts.

Scholars have generated an enormous amount of evidence suggesting that employee ownership can strengthen firm performance, survival, and job stability, improve employee economic well-being, and address wealth inequality. In this module, you will learn some of the most important research findings, findings that are relevant to real-world practice. By the end of this module, you will understand several important takeaways from the research.

Welcome to the final part of the course. This section introduces basic information about implementing two forms of employee ownership, the ESOP and the worker cooperative. The two company founders who you met earlier will share more about how they adopted employee ownership. Tracy Till is co-founder of a company that became an ESOP. Jarret Schlaff co-founded a worker cooperative. Both will tell you why their business became employee owned, and how they and their colleagues did it. Both will describe important steps in the process and lessons they learned along the way. We have included links to optional, supplemental, instructional resources. By the end of this portion of the course, you will know much more about how one business owner sold the business she co-owned to employees through an ESOP, and how a different organization became a worker cooperative. You will take away a basic understanding of the key steps in the process, knowledge of important questions to ask, and resources for finding more detailed guidance.