One Person's Share

Abstract

Every plan in this book has two sides. On one side is a firm deciding what to share. On the other is a person, and usually a household, deciding what it means to receive it. Most writing about employee ownership is written from the first side. This chapter is written from the second. It is for a worker who has been offered a share, holds one already, or works somewhere that may one day pass to its people. It is also for a self-employed person or a small partner whose whole livelihood is, in effect, a stake in one enterprise. It asks what such a stake is worth to a household, what it risks, and how to think about it clearly. It is not investment advice. It does not say what anyone should buy, sell or hold, and it does not set a figure for any household. Those decisions belong to the household, ideally with an adviser who knows its whole position. What this chapter can do is set out the questions worth asking, the evidence that bears on them, and a way of looking at one's working life that the house's book offers and that no financial statement does.