Following the announcement from First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in August about the establishment of a new Industry Leadership Group, ‘Scotland for Employee Ownership’ (SfEO), an Employee Ownership Champion has been recruited to work with the group.
We caught up with Yogi Johnston, Champion, Scotland for Employee Ownership, to find out more about her role and what the SfEO group will be working on.
“I am thrilled to be given the opportunity to work for SfEO. Being a HR professional, I’ve always focused on challenging individuals, managers and teams to have an inclusive approach to how they work. I want to use that experience at a macro level to influence and enable entire businesses to work and grow in an inclusive way; resulting in a stronger, larger and more confident Employee Owned Business community in Scotland.
“My focus for the coming year will be to work with the SfEO Board members to help deliver the strategy, visit Employee Owned businesses across Scotland and facilitate initiatives in three key areas; learning, enabling and influencing.
“We want our Employee Owned businesses to thrive, which means enabling access to the right type of learning and development. Therefore, one of the group’s key initiatives will be to drive the creation of a world class learning environment where people will be able to access learning that will help them understand the technicalities of being employee owned as well as learning how to develop and maintain their employee value proposition.
“The SfEO group will also consider how we engage with key partners such as the Employee Ownership Association, to bring together Employee Owned Businesses (EOBs) from across Scotland. These types of events will focus on sharing knowledge and best practice, as well as discussing challenges and celebrating successes.
“One of the overall aims of SfEO is to raise the profile of Employee Ownership such that it moves from ‘the fringe to the mainstream’ as an attractive business model. To achieve this, we will be looking to engage with key influencers, including professional institutions and academic researchers to help influence research and policy – perhaps we can get a few university dissertations on the go too! I definitely have a busy year ahead of me and can’t wait to get started!”