Dive Brief:

• With his recent decision to generously share stock with its 2,000 employees, Greek yogurt maker Chobani CEO Hamdi Ukulaya made headlines. But the move may drive profits as well, according to various experts.
• The Christian Science Monitor reports that employee share ownership plans (ESOPs) exist but are uncommon among older employers. However, they are very popular with tech sector startups involved in nasty talent wars. The article notes a list of the largest 100 employee-owned companies released Aug. 2015 which has Publix supermarkets ranked first.
• Research shows that workers at ESOP employers may have more robust retirement plans in general, with about 65% of them offering a second retirement plan. The bottom line is positively affected due to the costs saved from unemployment benefits and federal taxes that are paid only in the event of sold stock or retirement.

Dive Insight:

Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits for the Society for Human Resource Management, told the Los Angeles Times that Chobani's decision was rare. "It's unusual to see that in food services and manufacturing," Elliott told the Times.

Elliott also told the Times that he doesn't expect many employers to follow Chobani's lead. ESOPs will remain a rarity for employees. Instead, he told the Times, regular employees are experiencing a rise in benefits over compensation these days, because "it's easier to cut a benefit than it is to cut a salary," Elliott said.

Writing in Forbes, Mary Josephs, CEO of Verit Advisors, said that when the employees are active participants (not just passive recipients), they typically outperform competitors' workers because they "adopt the habits of business owners." Josephs wrote that these habits may include "being highly productive; engaging in less friction between front-line workers and management; self-policing each other to reduce waste and errors; and offering up many helpful ideas."