The slogan for the Employee Ownership Association Conference was
“Be Involved, Be Informed, Be Inspired”
This is indeed what a party of 10 members of staff from Middleton Hall achieved. Over 700 delegates met as part of the growing EO community. We counted up how many individual people we talked to; between us the total was about 350! That is 350 people at different stages of their EO ‘journey’ who shared their experience of “thinking about”, “just become recently” or “established” as employee owned organisations.
As well as making the all important personal connections, we attended all the keynote speakers’ presentations. These included Andy Street (Mayor of the West Midlands and previously Managing Director of John Lewis and Partners), Deb Oxley (CEO of EOA), Chris McDermott (Managing Director of Cambridge Weight Plan) and Alastair Sawday (Founder of Sawday’s Canopy and Stars). The whole event was compered by Martine Croxall, BBC News TV presenter.
The 10 staff, who work in various mixed roles and are in the project team that is preparing for the move to EO, split up to ensure they attended almost all of the 22 smaller and more specialist seminars and workshops. Participation was encouraged so that, again, the benefit of people’s experience was well communicated. Session titles included “We are employee owned. Now what?”, “I am an employee owner, what does it mean?” and “Are we ready for EO?”
The event was held over two days, with a gala dinner and awards ceremony on the evening of the first day. This was an opportunity to relax a little after a pretty full on day.
The whole event has given the team much to reflect on. It is clear that Middleton Hall is well prepared with four months to go before the transition. Minds are turning towards the detail of the final steps and then the post-transition period. There is exciting work to be done!
Executive pay is never far from the headlines. Last week, the Chief Executive of a British Housebuilding company walked out of an interview with a BBC journalist when asked about his bonus of £75M. His bonus had in fact been reduced from £110M after adverse publicity centred on the elevation in the company’s share price from the government’s Help to Buy scheme. He was one of three directors of the company to receive frankly eye watering bonuses this year, causing the generally understated Vince Cable MP to comment that it was “reminiscent of the worst excesses of corporate greed that helped to create the financial crisis, when short-termism was heavily incentivised and long-term planning ignored“.
Thinking and planning for the long term is one of Middleton Hall’s underlying values and we have been carefully planning over the last few years how we can better share our success in the long term under a change of ownership.
Secret agent James Bond made a special appearance at the 007 themed coffee morning, hosted by 
The wellbeing of our staff is extremely important.
The new Mediterranean themed garden is attractive and tasteful … the wildflower area and wildlife walks are superb additions to the entry … the whole site achieves the highest of standards in all areas of the competition and is to be commended.
