CEO Blog: Reflections on the Power of EO at our Largest Conference to Date

Following the biggest and best eoa Annual Conference to date, our Chief Executive James de le Vingne reflects on the sector’s remarkable recent growth and looks ahead to the commitments, challenges, and opportunities for 2025.

Image: eoa Chief Exec James de le Vingne on stage at the eoa Annual Conference

I was delighted to join 864 employee ownership champions at this year’s eoa Annual Conference and listen to the confidence, courage, and conviction of the conversations stimulated by 130+ speakers and exhibitors. 

And apart from it being a whole lot of fun, with onstage banter with conference compere Maryam Moshiri, there were impactful keynotes on culture, customer experience, and social value, the awards celebration and after party. As I reflect on the power of the EO community at this year’s event, the opportunity of this has eclipsed any thoughts on simply making it bigger or better next year. 

Great EO Knowledge

The conference was the embodiment of Great EO in action, delivering significant people powered growth. The quality and power of the conversations in our forty-seven learning sessions is an unstoppable force that comes to life each year at the conference. 

The very nature of employee ownership is to improve and ‘up your game’ and our conference is the epicentre of sharing this – so to miss out is, quite simply, to be one step behind.

Our focus must therefore be on how we continue to convene and channel the power of EO, both at our conference and beyond to unlock the fullest potential of EO in the UK.

Commitments, Hopes, and Challenges for 2025

I left the conference full of confidence for the sector, next year’s event, and our direction of travel, despite a difficult business climate ahead. 

What we learned from our first keynote, Cultural Architect Javier Bajer, was that the culture of your business in taking on these challenges can make a huge difference in both the response and outcome. 

This wasn’t new to our sector with EO culture and ownership driving many of the Great EO impacts evidenced in the ‘People Powered Growth’ report, and more recent findings from Ownership at Work and ThinCats to show EO businesses are 50% more likely to be ‘Robust Growth Champions,’ including being less likely to face insolvency. 

Together, we were able to celebrate the recent first of its kind national support for EO: 

1. Government’s commitment to double the size of the cooperatives and mutuals sector
2. Rachel Reeves announcement to establish the Cooperatives and Mutuals Business Council with the eoa and other representative trade associations
3. The long-awaited reforms to the employee ownership trust (EOT) legislation, that protect its reliefs, integrity and increase its ease of use to deliver long term employee ownership. 

The EOT reforms, and national leadership for EO, were at the heart of our policy priorities work with our members and a key win from our policy aims set out in our eoa Manifesto, providing a great jumping off point for next year. 

We’ll continue our role and conversations to make sure that EO, under the Mutuals umbrella, is understood and represented.  

So, far from thinking getting national support being job done, it’s the start of more nuanced work, meaning the collective power and networks of members now ever more crucial. 

The Power of the EO Network

It’s commonly cited in behaviour change theory that if just 3% of people in a given network adopt a new behaviour, it can trigger broader social change – so the challenge for our attendees is to take a small action or two each to help build this change. 

We’ve already seen this effect in sectors before such as in architecture, where a few passionate EO champions drove adoption from 5% to 20% of the Architects Journal’s Top 100 firms in just three years.  

Similarly, the eoa’s ‘Rising Star of the Year’ 2023, Pennard Vets, saw EO as a solution to industry consolidation challenges, sparking wide interest within the veterinary field. 

It’s this approach from innovators and early adopters of the EOT over the past decade that’s seen the sector grow from fewer than 200 employee owned businesses (EOBs) in 2014 to 1,000 in 2022. Today the sector exceeds 2,000 businesses.

This is a long way off 3% of UK business, but then 2,000 seemed like a pipe dream just five years ago.

With tenfold the number of EOBs, and our insights and networks, through a series of small nudges collectively we can create greater momentum and change.

Together we can find places where EO can grow and offer opportunities not yet discovered.

Be Part of the EO 3% Drive

EO offers us the power now. It allows us to shape our workplaces and lives by grounding our work in our values, strengthening our communities, and creating lasting stability.  

We urge our networks to commit to commit to one or more of the following for 2025: 

• Reach out to your MP / professional network / business network with your EO knowledge
• Share your successes with the eoa network and beyond on EO impacts on people, planet, and place – through the eo Hub, events, news, and contributing to research 
• Take up the opportunity to get your customer experience insights from our keynote speaker Jonathan Winchester of insight6, and act on this to incorporate EO into your customer experience, including displaying your Proudly EO badge 

Great EO Responsibility