Always listen to the youngest monk

Stefan Stern

It can be smart to become an employee-owned business

The board may hope that everyone in their business feels a common purpose. But
in practice, incentives often clash, business units sit in silos, there is a gap between
top management and other employees, and a lack of trust is present at all levels.
One way out of these difficulties, for some organisations, is to become an employeeowned business.
Because you are all in it together and share a common interest in the businesss
success, employee ownership can remove some of the uncertainty over hierarchy and
incentives.
One might not necessarily expect a headhunting firm, often full of committed
individualists, to go down the employee ownership route. But that is what Saxton
Bampfylde, a London-based business, has just done. After trading successfully for 28
years, Stephen Bampfylde, the chairman, has voluntarily given up a significant
proportion of his equity holding to help create an employee-owned partnership for
76 people.
This is about sustainability for the business, Mr Bampfylde says. We have found
an organisational structure that matches what we do and how we operate.
The firm has created a board of trustees to oversee the running of the business. Three
of its seven members were elected after an all-partner vote, with each of these three
elected trustees coming from the businesss constituent teams: consultants,
researchers and support staff.
In this way voices from all parts of the business will be heard at the highest level. The
board of trustees also displays impressive diversity: it has four female and three male
members.
Two of the trustees are from Generation Y. One of these two, Kate Ludlow, who is
26, has only been with the firm for five years. Her election, Ms Ludlow believes, is
proof that the firm is committed to an open and consultative style of working, in
which hierarchy effects are reduced to a minimum.
The chairman echoes this view. I cant imagine taking a decision here without
peoples agreement. You cant just drive people. What you need is a structure that
supports the work.

There is some academic support for the benefit of the employee-owned model, which
confers particular advantages in knowledge and skill-intensive sectors, according to
Joe Lampel and Ajay Bhalla, both at the time at Cass Business School.
Sharing power and ownership can be a powerful way of winning engagement and
loyalty from talented people who might otherwise be tempted to go elsewhere.
Inverting the conventional age profile of seniority is a neat trick too.
Mr Bampfylde, a part-time Anglican Benedictine monk, says his spiritual guide on
this point was clear: Benedict said the abbot should always listen to the youngest
monk.