Author Description

The ESOP Communications Sourcebook is a book-CD package that includes 8 chapters on communicating your employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), 16 handouts (also provided in Word format on the CD) you can use, and a collection of 38 sample PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, images, and Word documents from a variety of ESOP companies. Explaining an ESOP to employees is difficult. The first challenge is that most employees have little experience with stock, and many do not really understand what stock is, where it comes from, and how it gains or loses value. Second, most employees do not understand how business works. This problem is made worse by the fact that most people either think they know more than they do or don't want to admit that they don't know. Third, ESOPs are not intuitive. At the NCEO, we have a hard time explaining ESOPs to business owners and financial reporters, let alone to everyday employees. One reason is that the terms used to explain ESOPs (allocations, leverage, distributions, vesting, fiduciaries, suspense accounts, valuation, and so on) are usually completely new to most employees. Fourth, employees generally are most interested to know the amount of stock they will receive and when they will receive it. Long explanations of this process can make employees squirm in their seats. Communicating ESOPs is not easy, but it is rewarding. One of the goals of an ESOP is to improve company performance by getting participants more involved. Research demonstrates that an effective communications program, combined with an ESOP that is financially significant and an active employee involvement program, results on average in significantly improved productivity and faster sales growth. Communications budgets are every bit as important as budgets for plan administration to the success of your ESOP. This book/CD package provides a jump start to your ESOP communications by giving you (1) chapters about how to communicate employee ownership and financial