The January 2026 Employee Owners Knowledge Share focused on the topic: The EO Advantage. We were pleased to welcome Liam Toms and Daisy Biggs, Communications & Engagement Manager and Helpdesk Support Apprentice, at Grapevine, who were the deserving recipients of the 2025 eoa award for ‘EO Rising Star of the Year’
eoa Award Winners
As the eoa themselves state, the EO Rising Star of the Year award “recognises the success of a business that’s become employee owned on or after 1 July 2022 but is already demonstrating and evidencing an EO advantage through its engagement, culture, and representation”.
It was on the theme of the ‘EO Advantage’ that Liam and Daisy spoke to the group, and it seemed there were two related but distinct advantages they unlocked from becoming employee owned: their people and their external perception.
The Employee Ownership Advantage – People
Grapevine introduced a Charter to their business which was designed following the input of all their people. This was not a top-down description of how to act, nor a bottom-up aspiration of how the employees wanted things to change; it was an authentic document built by everyone, and reinforced because everyone had input.
Daisy joined the business when it was already employee owned but spoke of how Grapevine’s culture was such that she felt she had the freedom and permission to stretch beyond her role. This freedom allows people to gravitate towards areas of the business where they excel, not because they are forced to, but because they want to.
Daisy sees the enthusiasm and contributions from people as self-perpetuating, with positivity breeding positivity creating a “snowball effect”.
Liam expanded on the ownership each person feels for their contribution. The Charter exists and covers everyone, but the individual ownership that has grown means each person can do the bits they specifically are able to.
A key benefit of Grapevine getting everybody is involved is that if each person plays their part in resolving the day-to-day issues, this stops these small issues floating up and clogging the time of senior management, allowing them to focus on more strategic matters (which in turn benefits all co-owners). An example Liam referenced was the cleaning rota the employees created – but what pleasantly surprised him was how people would pick up items not on the rota, because they saw it needed to be done – they took ownership upon themselves as they saw how it helped overall with the business they all own.
The Employee Ownership Advantage – External Perception
Empowering employees and helping them unlock the owner mindset is the key to unlocking the benefits of employee ownership. Another of the great benefits that Grapevine saw was a boost to the perception of their business externally.
It wasn’t that the business didn’t have a positive reputation, but as Liam said the business has been around for three decades, and therefore that’s enough time to have been around long enough to be forgotten about.
In effect, by virtue of the local and now national publicity which their employee ownership status attracted, it has helped put them back on the map. From press releases to speaking at events, people wanted to hear what they had done (and for a managed service provider to be asked to speak about their business rather than try and get in front of people, this was a welcome change).
How to unlock the Employee Ownership Advantage
Liam and Daisy closed by sharing their tips on how they think others could emulate their journey. The advice they gave was:
- Create a shared direction. They did this through their Charter.
- Create a roadmap. Know what is going to happen so you can communicate it to everyone.
- Be consistent. Changing your ownership structure, potentially your processes and how employees are engaged is a new way of working and when things change the new normal needs to be consistent for people to understand and feel comfortable.
- Persevere. As with most things that make a business better, it is going to require hard work and time.
Stephens Scown hosts the Employee Owners Knowledge Share monthly to help create a community space for employee owners, and those looking to transition. If you are interested in joining future sessions, please visit our Events page.
This article was co-written by Dave Robbins (Associate in our Corporate team) and Sam Moles (Ownership Engagement Advisor) who are both former employee ownership trustees, and currently sit on the firm’s Strategy Board.