Proudly employee-owned: An interview with Engage Founder and Owner Alex Willcocks

We’ve just become employee-owned, something we’re incredibly proud of. It’s going to boost us as a business, with our employees having a real say in how we do things going forward.

We sat down with our founder and MD, Alex, to get all the details. You can watch the interview above, or read the full transcript below.

“We’re here today with Alex Willcocks, MD at Engage, to discuss our recent transition to an EoT. What is an EoT?

An EoT stands for an Employee Ownership Trust. And essentially, it’s a business model that allows a company to be owned - as the name suggests - by its employees. What other well-known brands have adopted EoT models?

So there’s about 1,600 employee-owned businesses in the UK.

The biggest one that people probably know of is John Lewis. Others are Richer Sounds, Riverside Organic and also Aardman Animations became employee-owned.

So what does the EoT process involve, and how long did it take?

The process took about six months, end to end, to go through it all. it’s a lot of legal work which I won’t bore you with, but, I guess the more interesting parts of the process were all about governance and how you increase employee voice within the business.

Because naturally, an employee-owned business needs to represent the owners of that business, which are the employees. So part of the piece was the governance piece. So looking at that, we’ve got a new trustee board. So they sit to make sure the business is being run in the interests of the trustees, which are the employees.

And also we put two employees onto the operations board, so they’ve been voted on by their peers. And they’re going to sit on the ops board and as such, be much closer to the day-to-day decision-making in the business and hopefully be really great representatives for their teammates, at a board level.

How do you then see employee ownership influencing the company culture?

I think the main influence will be, I think knowing that everybody has a meaningful stake in the future success of the business should mean that everyone is maybe that little bit more motivated and a little bit more engaged. There’s a bit more meaning to work because everyone - as employee owners - has a meaningful stake in our success.

So hopefully that pushes us to be a better business, pushes our culture to be better, pushes the way we work with our clients to be better, the way we treat our staff and the work we do. All those kinds of things. I’d hope that they all improve as a result of this.

What impact will this have on clients and stakeholders?

I think it can only be a good thing for clients. I think knowing that everyone in your agency partly owns that agency and is committed to wanting your business to be better - wanting you to succeed so the agency can succeed - could only be a good thing. Obviously, we’ve not tried this yet, but I know I’ve spoken to a lot of other employee-owned businesses, and a lot of them have seen that they’ve become better businesses as a result.

I think if we could become a better business, that could be better for our clients, it can only be better for the people who work here, and all the stakeholders: be that clients, be that members of the trust, be that trustee board.

What’s your long-term vision for the agency as an employee-owned business?

I hope that the business goes from strength to strength under employee ownership. It’s been 17 years up to this point, and it’s kind of drawing a line in the sand and closing the chapter there, but then opening a new chapter where I’m really excited about what Engage could achieve as a business with different governance, a different mindset through shared ownership.

So yeah, I’m really excited about the future. I’m really hopeful of what we can achieve, and maybe we can achieve more under employee ownership than we could have done under a more traditional ownership model like a majority shareholder.

What advice would you give to other companies considering a similar transition?

I’d say just explore it as an option.

If you’re considering a change of ownership in some way, shape or form or at least thinking about the future, and that might be succession planning, all kinds of reasons, I guess. Currently the market is dominated by trade sales, private equity. They’ve got the loudest voice. Employee-ownership hasn’t got such a loud voice.

But, I think once you start to look into it, for the right kind of business, it’s almost a no brainer. The more we’ve looked into it for the team that we’ve got, for the future we see, for preserving the things that make Engage great, I think it was the best option on the table.

And I think obviously others have a vested interest not to promote employee-ownership because it’s not suitable for the reasons I’ve mentioned previously. I just say do your due diligence. Definitely consider it. Speak to me about it. If you’ve got any questions. I’m more than happy to talk about our journey and our experience, but yeah, put it in that.

You’ve got two options on the table. Add it as a third option. Consider it, speak to people about it, and then ultimately make your own conclusions.

So what inspired Engage’s decision to become an EoT?

I think it felt like the natural evolution of our journey up to this stage. Since we first opened our doors in 2007, we’ve always been a business who has cared about our people and championed culture.

It’s things like that that led us to become Leeds’ first B Corp in 2021, and that’s just lived and breathed in the business all those years. We talk a lot about being people-powered, but what better way to show that you’re people-powered or to show your people how important they are to the business than actually putting them in charge of the ongoing stewardship of the business.

I think there’s no bigger gesture or bigger change you can make that actually really backs your people. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re putting the future of Engage in the hands of the team. And that’s the team who helped build Engage and I don’t trust anyone more with its ongoing protection and legacy. So that’s what drove us to do it.

It feels like the right thing to do. There’s a long journey ahead of us, but I’m really excited about what that could look like and how I can ultimately support everyone here in making this the best employee-owned business we possibly can.

How do you keep the news a secret for so long? And then how did you reveal it to the team?

Good question. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not particularly good at keeping secrets, so sitting on this for six months was pretty tricky. Obviously we didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag before the actual event. So we basically disguised it as a team Q1 performance update.

We got everyone into the office, everyone into the theatre. And the first slide we pulled up just said, “Engage has been sold”. And a few mouths hit the floor. I saw everyone lose their minds a little bit, but then it was quickly followed by a slide saying, “we sold the business to you guys.”..

Yeah, you could feel the relief in the room. Obviously everyone had so many questions. And then the rest of the presentation was just bringing everyone on the journey I’ve been on with the board for the last six months and bringing them closer to what an EoT is, and what it means for the future. I quite enjoyed it actually.