Tax & cost, transparency & fairness: Private equity, Ownership works

Ownership Works is a broad-based employee ownership programme (initially championed by KKR, a private equity (PE) firm, but since rolled out to other PE firms). We find these kinds of broad-based ownership programmes to be a meaningful driver of social mobility. The programme offers employees of portfolio companies (at no expense to them) an option to participate in the private equity profits at the point the sponsor exits. Payouts are scaled in accordance with length of employee service and are given to all staff (not just senior management as seen in more traditional models). The programme has a proven track record of meaningfully improving employee/management alignment, examples of which include materially improving employee retention, productivity and employee efforts to drive costs efficiencies. Brunel is advocating for its adoption across the PE industry, alongside the emergence of a similar initiative for profit sharing by other private equity managers.