How are our sites marking EO Day?

EO Day (23rd June) is a national celebration of employee ownership in the UK.

We’re part of a sector with over 1,100 UK employee-owned businesses and which delivers in excess of £22bn of revenue to the UK economy every year!

All of our UK locations celebrate EO Day. It is an important day to raise the profile of the sector and lend our support to a fairer, more resilient, more productive way of running a business. To celebrate EO Day, our elected GLIDE representatives have organised BBQs across the Gripple sites to bring people together and focus on one of our core values - fun!

Our elected representatives also organise a range of activities through the year, with allocated ‘rep spend’ budgets which are there to enhance sports, social and well-being activities for our employee owners.

Previous activities on EO Day have included free ice creams across all of our sites; presentations from the CEO of the EOA; and open days which support and encourage local businesses exploring an EO model. It’s useful to add here that the first EO Day event we ran was much smaller; but this year, demonstrating the sector’s growth, we’ll have 19 different EO businesses represented at our network event at GLIDE house.

It’s exciting to be part of the EO sector as it grows and expands, with high profile businesses like Lush, Richer Sounds and GoApe, for example, transitioning to an EO model.

EO Day is also an opportunity for us to celebrate our own EO culture which is underpinned by:

• A culture of challenge – challenging the norm, asking questions, offering suggestions and sharing ideas.
  
  
• Fun and the idea that innovation and ideas come from collaboration, and in an environment where we all share the same, open plan working spaces, and we’re actively encouraged to join cross-team projects.
  
  
• We have a principle which is ‘if the ball drops, catch it’ and this means it’s our business, we’re owners, and it’s our collective responsibility, irrespective of position or hierarchy, to do the right things to ensure the business continues to grow and deliver value for us all.

We celebrate EO Day as Gripple is an ambassador for the EO sector. Our aim is to ensure we reinforce an EO culture amongst our people and to demonstrate how it promotes positive performance to other businesses.

For more information about Employee Ownership visit https://employeeownership.co.uk/