We sat down to speak to the founder of Engage Interactive to learn what employee ownership means for the company.
If you’ve found yourself scrolling through LinkedIn recently, you may have seen a thing or two about employee ownership. In what’s becoming a more common, but still bold, move for a company to take, this business model allows employees to own the majority of the shares, promoting equality, a wider spread of power and improved morale.
But how exactly does it work? Well, the majority ownership of a company is placed into a trust, created for the benefit of all employees. Instead of being controlled by outside investors or a single owner, the trust holds the shares on behalf of these employees, meaning profits can be reinvested or distributed among the team.
We know that companies like John Lewis, Richer Sounds and Go Ape have paved the way for the employee-owned business revolution, but we wanted to take a look closer to home, specifically Leeds. That’s when we came across Engage Interactive, who took the step in July 2024.
“There’s an inevitable moment in any business founder’s journey where they think, what does my future look like?”, Engage Interactive founder Alex Willcocks told us. “And so, I started exploring employee ownership, which would mean all the great things about Engage get retained, from the culture to the staff. I guess that’s kind of the point – everything changes when nothing changes.”
This now means that Alex owns the business as much as everybody else, something which he’s really excited about – it banishes preconceptions that agencies are mostly headed up by white, middle-aged men, instead fostering a diverse environment where marginalised voices now have a stake.
Not much has changed for the people of Engage Interactive day to day. They’re very much just finding their feet, having recently appointed two employees to the operations board after a vote. Their role will be working out how they want to interface with the team, bringing forth challenges, opportunities and innovation ideas from within the business.
When it comes to client relationships, Alex thinks things can only get better from here. “I’d hope they see an uplift on their account, maybe just a bit more attention, focus and care when we come to them and say ‘have you tried this?’. I’d hope that this enables us to transition more from the ‘do’ to the ‘think’.”
To put it simply, Engage are on a mission to become the best employee-owned business they can be. The fact that employees have got more voice means that year on year, they can look back and say they made better decisions, implemented better practices, listened to the people and allowed the team to have an input. Now only one question remains – which Leeds business is next?
