The team at award-winning Smile Together Dental CIC are delighted to be part of the UK Employee Ownership Day (EO Day), run by the Employee Ownership Association (EOA), on Friday 29 June 2018.
Multi award-winning Smile Together has around 100 employees and provides community and general dentistry from 14 sites across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. The organisation became an employee owned community interest company in 2016 to give its employees, as shareholders, a genuine voice in the business and its future development.
Managing Director Paul Critchley said: “We are really proud to be celebrating our second successful year as an employee owned community interest company, alongside others in the sector. We have a proactive Staff Council supporting our employees and together we have achieved more than we could have imagined, going further into our communities to help those who need us most“.
Deb Oxley, CEO for the Employee Ownership Association, said: “Organisations such as Smile Together are great examples of the economic and social benefits that can be achieved in an employee owned environment. The EOA is proud to lead the sector-wide celebrations of employee ownership on EO Day 2018, as part of our activity to raise awareness and move employee ownership further into the mainstream of business structures.”
With numerous events running across the UK and the involvement of thousands of employee owners and other partners, EO Day is an integral part of the EOA’s events calendar and was introduced to raise awareness of employee ownership as an economically strong and balanced business model.
To celebrate EOA Day 2018, Smile Together has created a short film highlighting its team’s achievements over the last year, and run a prize draw for its shareholders to win tickets for two events being run by its charity of the year, Cornwall Air Ambulance Trust. The draw takes place on 29th June!
The benefits of employee ownership have been proven in EOA-led research, and include improving employee health and wellbeing, increasing productivity and fostering creativity and innovation across an array of industry sectors. In addition:
- UK employee owned companies contribute over £30 billion to the UK economy annually
- Employee-owners have higher levels of job satisfaction, feel a greater sense of achievement and job security, and are more likely to recommend their workplace than employees in non-employee owned businesses
- Employee owned businesses operate in a range of sectors including healthcare, social care, education, transport, manufacturing, retail and professional services