Under the new ownership structure, employees now indirectly own 74% of the £20m turnover business through an employee ownership trust (EOT). This enables the company to be employee-owned but without individual employees having to personally invest in shares. A key aspect of an EOT is that it must benefit all employees on an equal basis. 

Gary Ward, GPW’s operations director, told Recruiter that the decision taken by company chairman Graham Worsley, alongside his wife Carole, had as expected had been “very, very well received by staff”.

Ward said the move was both a reward for the loyalty of the company’s existing staff but also a sign of the way the company wanted to go forward in the future. “We are different to other recruitment companies in terms of our family feel but in a medium-sized company.”

Ward said he expected that the EOT would also increase the motivation of staff. “They are going to get rewarded as a direct result of it,” he explained.

The move to employees owning most of the company will also reduce the risk of the company being sold or taken over, said Ward, thereby sustaining the company’s independence and values. 

Ward said that although a sale or merger could have been an option for the chairman, “he didn’t want to lose what we had built”. “This was a great way of giving back to the staff going forward.”

In a statement, Worsley said: “Traditional mergers & acquisitions always carry with them a disruption and uncertainty about what will happen to the company culture and its employees post-acquisition.

“The EOT offers a business model that recognises and rewards all staff whilst providing continuity for clients, suppliers and employees, and crucially, can be an important tool for attracting and retaining talent.”

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