- [Narrator] (uplifting music) Let's face it, the world we once knew is changing.

And as we adapt to the ever changing landscape of our personal lives, the traditional way we think of employment is changing too.

Today's companies are looking for ways to put employees first.

Striving to create a more fair, equitable and culturally inclusive environment for the businesses they work so hard to build.

One way to do that is with employee ownership.

With a myriad of options, Colorado has positioned itself to be a nationwide leader in employee-owned companies.

Putting ownership back into the hands of the people.

- To be an owner means taking on that responsibility of making sure the company, the culture, the employees, all those things work really well together.

- Being an owner is a very encompassing thing.

An employee can draw a box around this is my job, but with an owner, there is no box.

- And it's about sharing and the commitment and the mindset the drive to do bigger things.

- I can't help, but equate it with parenthood somehow.

You know, we don't own our children obviously, but we're responsible for them in the same way.

It brings love into our lives, it brings so much pride and also it's incredibly difficult.

- I'm not only trying to build value for myself, but building value for people that I care about.

- Being an owner is being really part of a team.

There isn't like super stars.

- It dates back to what we conceived of centuries ago at the signing of the declaration of independence.

What does it mean to own anything?

I was a co-owner and the general counsel at an employee-owned solar company in Boulder, Colorado Namaste Solar.

I worked on contracts, HR issues.

It's really inspired me and I took that combination of practice and brought it into my firm.

And we work with any kind of mission-oriented company that's looking to build a more just equitable business in a more sustainable economic fashion.

You know, our traditional context ownership is about control and it's about the ability to earn a profit or earn a share of the success of the business.

And in the traditional environment those two things have been tied to capital.

And we're in an environment now where we are addressing some of the shortfalls of the capital-driven ownership model.

- I was an entrepreneur in the tech sector and in the tech sector, it's fairly standard.

All the tech companies I started had universal stock options meaning every employee, whether you're admin out front, whether you're an executive whether you're a programmer, every employee gets options in the company and play ownership can make sure that really everybody thinks like an owner.

You care lot more about the success of the company because you have a stake in it.

There's so many different models for employee ownership.

There's, ESOP's, there's a stock option plans.

There's formalized profit sharing agreements.

There's stock grants.

There's so many ways to do it, but we really see this as a big part of what makes Colorado successful.

The success of our employee owned companies that partial employee ownership, full employee ownership really means that when a company does well, everybody does well.

(upbeat music) - I was raised on a farm.

So I was very comfortable with entrepreneurship owning your own business, worked in a family business from a multi-generation business.

When I went to college at the Colorado School of Mines I immediately was kind of gravitated toward the research labs.

That's where I met John Wolgamott.

- He's the mechanical genius and I'm kind of the jack of all trades.

In between the two of us we got a lot of good work done.

We were natural partners that way.

Late 1979, the uranium industry was booming.

People were doing a lot of research down in New Mexico.

Conventional equipment wasn't working too well.

And they heard a lot about this new magic thing.

These water jets that we were working on at the School of Mines, we quit our research role and decided to become manufacturers of mining equipment, drilling water jets, and then the industry fell apart.

(upbeat music) We pivoted and got out of the mining industry, got into the cleaning industry.

- What we make are some very high pressure water jet tools to wash, to blast these deposits of materials out of processing equipment.

- Jerry and I found really early on is that owners make really the best employees.

Everything's important.

It's gotta be done.

It doesn't matter whether it's picking up something off the floor or calling a customer back.

There's no job description that says that's not my job - For me being an owner has just been a fantastic journey to not just go punch a card every day and maybe do a job that I'm not interested in.

I'm fully vested in everything I'm doing.

The culture I think is a bit different and that's inspired by our founders.

And also our CEO, Kerry Siggins - Employee ownership.

It really promotes longevity, which of course is something that is extremely important to most companies.

We want employees to feel vested and part of the team and contributing.

So we don't have high turnover.

- They lay the groundwork to allow you to come in and speak freely.

We all have access to exactly where we are with the revenue every day with new product development what our goals are, what our strategies are.

It's an incredible culture.

- From the time that I joined there was the option to purchase stock.

And at the time the vision was that everybody would be a shareholder in the company.

However, as the company grew, that became not an option.

And so the next step in evolution is to take it up to an ESOP.

- So an ESOP is an employee stock ownership plan and it is a retirement benefit.

Any company in the US can become an ESOP.

It's an ownership structure.

It allowed every employee to participate and broad ownership was a key part of our recipe for success.

Our employees really embody the own it mindset and appreciate being able to owning part of the company.

- It allows you to share in the wealth you create, if you're an employee and you're working someplace and you do achieve something, you get some value created.

The company gets paid for it well.

It's nice that if you get paid for it.

- It didn't have to stay in the hands of the employees.

The fact that everything is so transparent, that is above and beyond working for a paycheck at any other company.

(uplifting music) - The thing that interested me most about Stoneage was that it was located in Durango because it's a hidden gem very quickly through the interview process.

It switched from just getting to Durango and finding a job to live here, to working at Stoneage.

- One of the reasons we don't wanna sell out is that they would move the operation to Houston or some industrial city where it's makes more sense economically.

There's a trade off.

Here we've got, I think, more quality of life.

And because of that, we really have more quality of people.

- Here's a nice, safe community that you can raise your kids.

Everyone knows each other.

Nothing's that far out of reach.

- When we come home from a day of work we can just run up a mountain and come back and enjoy all of those things like being out in nature.

It's a big deal.

- It's small enough where you can feel like you're part of something.

And you're part of a community that's trying to accomplish similar goals and employee ownership is what allows us to stay in Durango - Right before COVID hit we got hacked and we put together a plan and we manually shipped for four weeks.

In fact had our biggest week ever.

That still gives me goosebumps.

All of that teamwork, all that kumbaya coming together on the day we went back up on our ERP system March 16th was the day that I told our employees to not come to work.

So can you imagine the wild swing from we are in this together and we are working here side by side to get through the biggest disruptive event of our history to then go everybody's at home and we have to regroup and figure out what this looks like a shock to the system but our employees are amazing and we figured it out.

It was truly the shining example of the own it mindset.

- Everybody is out for each other's best interest in the company's best interest, which really offers the ability to take people at face value.

There's no hidden agendas.

Here at Stoneage I'm working for friends and family.

- To be an owner means to hold something as your own.

You invest your self into the team.

I think everybody likes the sense of productivity that they get from completing a job well.

- We'll have our career, we'll cash in our stock option plans.

We'll walk away, I'll look back and just be extremely proud of the people that I've worked with and the customers that I've helped.

And some of the incredible products that we've created that have never existed before.

It's really, really cool.

(upbeat music) - I grew up in a small village in the Mediterranean Island, Greece.

Came to the United States, 73 started Chicago, Denver and then Boulder.

Then I decided to come to Fort Collins and start Palmer Flowers in Fort Collins.

Right now, it's only four flower shops in Fort Collins.

And we maintain about 67% of the market, and we developed a mission statement, it was employees number one, customers number two, community involvement.

And then profitability.

- I started with Palmer Flowers when we had a tiny store downtown Fort Collins and I've been here about 42 years.

I've done just about every job there is to do here.

And I'm kind of still doing that ( laughing).

It's great to work at a place that puts employees first.

And it's always been that way even at the beginning was Spiro's model.

And then he wanted to carry that through to employee ownership.

Employee ownership means people who work at the company really own that company, not just on paper, not monetarily, they own what that company is.

And I think employee ownership really helps bring that home to people.

- My wife, Danielle and I bought our first flower shop in 2012.

And it's what is now Palmer Flowers in Loveland.

We bought another flower shop in 2013 in Boulder.

And then in early 2014, Spiro Palmer and Michelle Adams who are now our partners approached us.

Spiro started laying out this slid, I thought was kind of a crazy plan to roll the companies and to employ ownership.

Danielle and I loved the concept.

It's a stock ownership model.

We had 25 employees.

We went overnight to 85, 90 employees.

It was clear to us that if we were gonna grow we couldn't be in all places at all times.

So what initially attracted me most about employee ownership was the managerial benefits of having an employee owner at all of our locations.

And even in the larger locations in all departments it would be impossible for me and my wife to have our eye that tightly on those things.

- We all have an area of expertise in the business.

We all compliment each other.

And we all have the same goals in mind which is the goals that Spiro started out with.

- We are quicker to respond by having employee owners at our different locations.

- We have a couple of different systems for making decisions in our company.

We have partner meetings once a month and all of the partners sit down in one room and we talk about the big picture things and then boil it down to things that we need to actually work on.

- Anyone in that room if they have something that they want to move forward with they have to fully vet them and present them in front of the group.

It makes the decision-making process much more complete.

I can't even imagine going through COVID without having our partners.

It was so much easier for me to focus on how do I keep my business operating.

- The COVID pandemic has affected our weddings.

We couldn't have our traditional holiday open house where we have 3,000 people come.

But on the other hand, people are searching for a way to reach out to people.

And our business is really sending emotion.

And so it has been okay for us.

- What's not as frequently talked about is the mental health benefits of fresh flowers and plants and people's homes how they feel, how they feel connected with when they receive a gift of flowers and plants.

It never mattered more than during COVID - Having all those heads put together to think of how can we solve this problem?

How can we succeed?

How can we move forward?

Getting employees owners helps you get through tough times no matter what it is because those people want the company to succeed.

- My role in this as part of the, one of the early founders of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center it's been an interest of mine for literally 50 years.

It always seems so logical.

Why didn't everybody just see it made sense.

Let the employees own the company, they work better.

People know who's not doing their job.

And if they are all employee ownership they're not gonna allow that to go on too long.

There's a myth around that it doesn't work.

And then all the studies the employee owned companies will much less laid off partly because when things get tough, they work together.

People first always people first.

It's not the money first.

- I think we're so accustomed in America, particularly in the corporate context where payroll and employment is literally on the liability side of a profit and loss statement.

And employee ownership metaphorically is about saying to the employees you're not a liability.

You are the central asset this business depends on.

The profit that's earned is earned because of the capabilities and the energy of employees.

- Ownership is about empowerment.

When you own a company, you really control your own success and failure.

No, one's a harder boss than yourself.

And employee on companies they see and feel that every day.

- Merrick is an engineering and architecture firm.

We're located in over 20 offices around the country.

We work in six main business units; nuclear, life sciences, high performance facilities geomatics and infrastructure engineering.

Merrick started in 1955 with division of Sears Merrick.

He joined with a couple of other guys and their vision early on was to have employee ownership be a key part of the company.

Sears Merrick said, if an employee works for himself he's gonna be more committed.

Employee ownership allows everybody to think day in and day out.

How can I make this company better?

Because I know if I make the company better I'm gonna make my career and myself better.

We have a direct stock program and an ESOP.

And the ESOP is for everybody in the company.

The direct stock program is an invite.

What we wanna do is match up the characteristics and the traits of shareholders that will match with people that we feel will be eventual leaders in the company.

So we kind of groom people over a couple of years.

- I'm a direct stock shareholder.

And I remember making the decision that I wanted to be involved with that aspect of employee ownership beyond the ESOP and its investment but one that I wanted to take, I wanna have input to what our company is doing in the future.

And I wanna be seen as someone that's committed to the company, they were great at educating guests at different parts of employee ownership.

We talked to clients and they say something stands out about you guys.

You are so flexible and we think that's truly because our employees have the power to make decisions and they're truly committed to their clients and their projects.

- We've gone through some hard times here.

We had a CEO who passed away suddenly and having an employee ownership culture can really strengthen the fabric of the whole company to allow companies to withstand that that's a big blow to a company but we were able to pick up the pieces, employee ownership is not just the capital structure of this company.

It's the fabric of who we are.

(uplifting music) - Our Community language Co-operative, we make sure that we're able to provide interpretation, translation and language justice training to make sure that everybody is able to participate in society and engage civically in the language of the heart.

I found Indira and the community language cooperative in 2016, I started interpreting for the first time at a church and we realized there was kind of a natural skill set that just needed to be developed.

From there I shadowed Indira, got to learn about the co-op and immediately was brought onto the team.

I understood the importance of bilingualism and service to the community in Spanish.

My parents are immigrants.

I am a first generation in the United States and the cooperative really presented an opportunity to grow professionally in a service that I felt passionate about that I really thought was going to be beneficial to my community.

We're able to all pitch in.

We're all able to invest into this company, whether it's with time or with monetary investments.

My passion for language justice really takes my work to another level.

Not only am I out there in the community, just interpreting but I really wanna make sure that folks are able to understand the history of language oppression.

That folks are able to understand the best practices in how to use that, to create an inclusive and an equitable space.

We live in a society and in a world that is changing rapidly.

And we see that now with COVID-19 at the co-op we've already had to make a lot of changes to accommodate these external factors that we have to consider and we're going to continue to do so.

A cooperative model can break those systemic barriers.

A cooperative model can allow folks to come in to develop their skills and to turn them into that shining star that they're really meant to be.

There are many more benefits for many more people with this model.

(insightful music) - Dojo 4 is a software agency.

We build custom software for clients and we're particularly known for solving hard technical problems.

I had a lot of preconceived ideas about what a cooperative is.

So when I first started to try to understand what is a cooperative, I had a really hard time putting my finger on it.

And my best understanding of how you could easily describe a cooperative now is I would say cooperative is a business organization that diversifies ownership amongst all its workers.

This is the cool thing about cooperatives is that you can really turn it into whatever it needs to be.

That's going to serve the need of your community or the mission of the company or whatever the driving force is.

Your organization is what your organization is.

And every organization has its own personality.

We were already running our business kind of as a cooperative anyways, and we just didn't have that legal structure in place.

And we decided to work with our lawyer, Jason Wiener with the transition from a more traditional company to a cooperative.

- First thing to know about Dojo 4 is that they are independent minded.

They are certified B Corp which means that they have committed to higher standards of accountability for a social purpose.

- It really gave people an opportunity to, for themselves figure out what does it mean?

What are the kind of legal structures of a cooperative?

What can they be?

What should they be?

What fits for our organization?

I thought people were gonna kind of want more like I'm gonna take control or I'm gonna lead this thing.

And the group of people that we happened to work with they were like, we don't wanna do that.

We don't wanna make a whole bunch of decisions together.

We don't wanna decide about little day-to-day things and we don't wanna manage each other.

We want you to keep doing that.

I definitely saw a change right away when we signed our operating agreement.

I think there was a lot of exuberance at the time and I felt like this swell of engagement.

And when we do business, we're always talking about capital and we're only talking about one kind of capital financial capital, but in our company, we also like really have an tremendous amount of social capital.

But I would say we have a lot of spiritual capital.

So it's like stuff that is like personally inspiring to us which is, I think what has kept our business going for now over 10 years and cooperatives reflect that way of being - Employee ownership, changes the culture of a business in so many ways.

And I smile when I think about how it changes because the very first thing I notice is a sense of empowerment and a sense of belief in the underlying capacity of workers.

- I hope that Stoneage can be one of those little stories out there to show that you can be successful.

Having the employees involved this way is healthier for your company.

It's healthier for your community.

And I think if we got enough awareness out there so that more people were doing it, you know, it'd be healthy for the country at large because too much of the rewards go to a few and it should be spread better.

- The results of employee ownership and its cultural benefits are so valuable.

But it's hard to know what path to march down until you start getting some feedback from your team.

- Educate, educate yourself, educate your employees because there are so many nuances to employee ownership.

- One of the things that we talk about on governor policies is employee ownership commission is getting startups involved with education piece of what it means.

- Thanks to the work of the Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

We want to facilitate and help to talk about the advantages of employee ownership, provide technical assistance where we can to get companies there to really highlight in recruiting companies to come to Colorado.

- So my name's Glenn Plagens I'm the director of business support and rural prosperity for the Colorado office of economic development and international trade.

The Colorado employee ownership office is passionate about employee ownership.

What you've seen today in this documentary is happy engaged people.

Employee ownership is more than just going to work.

I'm in front of Trident Booksellers in Boulder, Colorado who during a global pandemic converted to employee ownership.

I was a business owner for 23 years.

It changes who you are.

It changes the fabric of your company and your people.

I hope you'll entertain employee ownership for your company.

I'm gonna go into Trident Booksellers and to see how they're doing.

- We're living through the largest wealth transfer in human history.

As baby boomers start to retire, they are turning over millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands if not millions of businesses there's both wealth and operating history and structure that needs to be reconsidered.

We have that interfacing with a whole new generation of people living in political, social and economic moments that are not going away until we embed the principles of equity, justice and fairness in our economy.

And so I am just eager to see this continue to expand.

(uplifting music)