Bret Keisling spreads the word about an exciting new online course, Our Share: Employee Ownership as a Wealth Sharing Tool, presented by the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing and taught by Adria Scharf and Joseph Blasi. The curriculum was developed by Dr. Scharf with support from Mary Ann Beyster and the Beyster Foundation for Enterprise Development.
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Mini-cast 216 Transcript
[00:00:00] Bret Keisling: Welcome to the ESOP Mini-cast. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Bret Keisling, and as it says on my business cards, I'm a passionate advocate for employee ownership. There is a great new educational tool that's been launched by the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing.
[00:00:26] It's an online course offered on Coursera, which is a leading platform for virtual learning, and it's the very first course offered there focused on employee ownership in the workplace. The curriculum was developed by Adria Scharf with support from Mary Ann Beyster and the Beyster Foundation for Enterprise Development.
[00:00:45] Adria is doing amazing things in the employee ownership space. She was one of the keynote speakers at NCEO's 2022 annual conference. She's a Beyster fellow. And she's the director of the Curriculum Library for Employee Ownership, or CLEO, at the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, which is part of the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, and we've certainly talked about CLEO quite a bit in our previous podcasts.
[00:01:11] The course is called Our Share: Employee Ownership as a Wealth Sharing Tool, and it introduces employee ownership to business owners, employees, professors, students, and anyone interested in building an economy in which wealth is shared more broadly.
[00:01:27] I received an email press release about the program and Adria Scharf says, quote, "Employee share ownership holds enormous potential for workers, businesses, and local economies, and this course shows how it's done. Students will learn what employee share ownership means, how it differs from traditional business models, which forms it takes, and what the research shows," unquote.
[00:01:50] The release goes on to say that "Business owners will discover how employee share ownership can provide a powerful succession strategy. Those interested in creating an [Employee Stock Ownership Plan] ESOP or worker co-op will learn what questions to ask, where to go for assistance, and how to navigate the conversion to employee ownership."
[00:02:07] "Employees will learn how gaining an ownership stake where they work can build wealth on top of wages alone. This could be especially impactful for low-income and moderate-income workers."
[00:02:18] " The curriculum is also relevant to professors and students in numerous fields, including business, economics, entrepreneurship, human resource management, labor studies, law, organizational behavior, public policy, and sociology."
[00:02:33] The course is free, although there's a small fee for those students who wish to obtain a certificate, which they can use on their resume or on their LinkedIn profile, et cetera. We're going to include a link in our show notes so that you can easily find the course on coursera.org.
[00:02:49] We're also going to include a link to an introductory video that you can access even if you don't have a Coursera account. The course is instructed by Adria Scharf as well as Joseph Blasi, who is a distinguished professor and director of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers.
[00:03:08] I think this is a very important addition to the employee ownership, toolkit, as we're discovering more and more resources available for those who are considering employee ownership. It's also very helpful that the courses designed by educators, which gives it a certain gravitas that might be missing from those that are offered by EO professionals as a marketing tool.
[00:03:27] If you're looking to learn about employee ownership, this course, again, is called Our Share: Employee Ownership as a Wealth Sharing Tool. It's a great place to start.
[00:03:37] Congratulations to Adria Scharf and her colleagues at Rutgers and those who are behind the scenes and creating the program. It's a great addition to the educational efforts and I'm so excited that they've launched this course. I really hope you'll check it out.
[00:03:53] With that, we'll wrap up today's episode of the ESOP Mini-cast. Thank you so much for listening. This is Bret Keisling. Be well.
[00:04:00] Bitsy McCann: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook at EO Podcast Network and on Twitter @ESOPPodcast. This podcast has been produced by Bret Keisling for the EO Podcast Network, original music composed by Max Keisling, branding and marketing by BitsyPlus Design, and I'm Bitsy McCann.
Standard Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are my own and don't represent those of my own firms or the organizations to which I belong. Nothing in the podcast should be construed as guidance or advice of any kind in any field and the fact that I mentioned an organizational website or an advocate or a company on a podcast does not reflect an endorsement, but if you've heard your name or your group's name mentioned on this podcast, I'd love to have you come on and talk about it yourself.
A note on the transcript: This transcript was produced by Descript, an automated transcription service. While it has been reviewed by The EsOp Podcast, we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the transcription. Please refer to the original audio when citing sources.