Why employee-owned businesses can outperform rivals - Paul Taylor

By Paul Taylor, director, Creative Space Management
Published 10th Apr 2021, 12:00 BST
SMEs are often not aware that it is not only large companies such as John Lewis that may adopt the employee-ownership model, says Paul Taylor, director at Creative Space Management in Leeds. PHOTO: PA Media.SMEs are often not aware that it is not only large companies such as John Lewis that may adopt the employee-ownership model, says Paul Taylor, director at Creative Space Management in Leeds. PHOTO: PA Media.
SMEs are often not aware that it is not only large companies such as John Lewis that may adopt the employee-ownership model, says Paul Taylor, director at Creative Space Management in Leeds. PHOTO: PA Media.
I think most business owners would agree that an exit strategy or succession planning isn’t exactly front of mind when you enter the exciting heady world of setting up your own business. It certainly wasn’t for me or my colleagues when we established our urban regeneration and property management company Creative Space Management.

However, times change and as we reached our fifteenth business anniversary last year, it felt like the right time to start thinking about that possible next step. The shareholders ranged from early forties to early sixties, and although no one was quite ready to call it a day, we started to think about changes we could make to move the business forward in a way that worked not just for us but for everyone who puts so much in to CSM.

We started to explore the various options and quite quickly seemed to gravitate towards the Employee Ownership model, thinking this might be the right fit for us. As the name suggests, employee-owned businesses are totally or significantly owned by their employees, so no surprises there.

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