My firm is employee owned, the result of its former leaders' interest in remaining independent and its current leaders' disinterest in taking on large amounts of debt to purchase the firm.

We created our Employee Stock Ownership Plan in 1993. For the next eight years, the company contributed the equivalent of nearly 15 percent of employee salaries to the ESOP trust. As a result, we were able to retire our previous leadership debt free.

The ESOP addressed our financial succession. It also delivered another important benefit: Differentiation. Our employee-owned structure became a point of distinction at a critical period in our growth. We were beginning to reach beyond our legacy Midwest corporate and investor-relations practices and to compete nationally with firms that were more established in B2B and B2C marketing territory. Workplace differentiation was paramount to recruiting and retaining talent and clients.

Given that, you might expect the rest of this piece to lobby, wholesale, on behalf of ESOPs. Not so. Creating and operating an employee-owned structure isn't for everyone. It requires a high level of financial discipline. It carries an administrative cost. And it demands gut-level discussions about the timing of major shareholder departures and retirements in order to minimize repurchase liability.

An employee-ownership structure isn't for everyone. However, the ESOP experience has convinced me that an employee-ownership culture IS for everyone. Although an Employee Stock Ownership Plan may be the most direct route to creating that culture, there are many ways to foster an ownership mentality.

I can testify to that last point first-hand, since Padilla's employee-ownership culture was established long before we created the ESOP. Scan the grid below and you'll see that the Rights and Responsibilities that guide our ESOP are not exclusive to a type of structure – only to a type of mindset. And when that mindset happens, however it happens, everybody wins.

Open Books and Open Minds

Many public relations firms have some level of open-book management. Our view is the more you help employees understand the business, the more likely they are to enter their time, get invoices out the door, and think twice before they expand the scope of work without prior client approval. Review financial statements at monthly staff meetings, and everyone will understand how a consulting firm makes money, where that money goes, and how they can help keep more of it within the company.

All-Out Sharing

Making more money for the company begs the question of who benefits from the additional income. Before we became an ESOP, we gave year-end bonuses to every employee. The bonus pool was based on income; the bonuses checks were based on individual performance. After we become an ESOP, we chose to continue performance-based bonuses in addition to ESOP contributions, since the latter cannot account for individual performance. If your company doesn't make performance bonuses available to all employees, reconsider this if at all possible. It's not just the money. It's a show of respect and an acknowledgement that everyone who plays a part in the firm's success should benefit from the firm's success.

Ideas from Anywhere

On our Intranet is an employee-generated "Top Ten" list in support of an ESOP (read: employee-ownership) culture. Reason Four says "It's great to be an employee owner at Padilla because we can voice our opinions about all aspects of the company with freedom." That mindset is not exclusive to an ESOP any more than a good idea is the sole domain of senior management. Of course, we must temper these "ideas from anywhere" with the insight that's available only to those who lead the company. But top down is dead, if it ever lived at all in successful professional-service firms. An employee- ownership culture fosters more ideas -- and more good ideas -- in addition to loyalty and pride.

Shared Solutions

Some firms survey staff on their level of engagement. Many don't. They fear the answers will create an "us vs. them" attitude between managers and staff. In an ownership culture, that's less likely to happen. Problems – and their solutions -- are a shared responsibility. If employees share in the rewards, they also must share in surfacing issues and finding answers.

An employee-ownership structure helped my firm define its point of difference. I'm grateful for that. I'm even more enthused that the ownership culture behind an ESOP is available to all public relations firms regardless of structure. If you're not already there, I encourage you to embrace the culture of employee ownership and make it your own. Rights & Responsibilities of Employee Ownership

Lynn Casey is the, chair and CEO of Minneapolis, MN-based Padilla Speer Beardsley. She is also a founding partner of the Worldcom Public Relations Group.