The December 2025 Employee Owners Knowledge Share focused on the topic: understanding commerciality.
We were pleased to welcome David Alterman, the CEO of The Nursery Research & Planning, who transitioned to employee ownership at the end of 2020.
Employee Ownership Understanding Commerciality
When a business is exploring employee ownership, there are always discussions about culture and communication, but something which often doesn’t get talked about until a while after transition is employee’s commercial understanding.
David shared his thoughts on why it’s important for employees to understand the commercial reality of an employee owned business, with the group then splitting into break out rooms to continue the discussions on the points he raised.
Key points we took away from the session were:
- EO transitions are often promoted to employees as a means of business continuity which maintains the status quo, with the same people still doing the same jobs (just with the previous owners being replaced by the employee owners). But this approach may not be effective for instilling a sense of commerciality into employees – if everything is the same, why would an employee feel the need to start thinking like an owner?
- Employees are experts in their roles, but chances are their role doesn’t involve understanding finances. It’s unrealistic to expect employees to understand the wider commercial aspects of the business without a process of upskilling. Regular and consistent touch points with employees to educate them on finances is key.
- Part of the financial education for employees is them understanding that following the transition, the business has a substantial debt which needs servicing.
- The business may already have targets for sales or client facing roles, but introducing individual targets for those in operational or support roles can be used to demonstrate to employees that everybody has an impact on the performance of the business.
- External disruption to the business (for example from AI or new competitors) can be used as an opportunity to improve employees’ commerciality. Discussions with employees on what opportunities and threats they see from the disruption can be linked to how these are likely to impact the business’ revenue, costs and profit.
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.