Employee Ownership Healthcheck
Helping you get the most from employee ownership
Becoming employee-owned is a significant milestone but the journey does not end when the Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) is established. In fact, you could argue it’s just the beginning.
Over time, businesses evolve. Leadership teams change, trustees move on and new challenges emerge. It’s vital to ensure your employee ownership reflects where your business actually is, and sometimes it may need a fresh look.
You should also ensure that you’re on top of tax rule changes to avoid problems with HMRC.
Our Employee Ownership Healthcheck provides an independent review of how your employee ownership structure is working in practice, helping your management team and trustees:
- identify opportunities to improve, streamline or simplify
- tackle any problems,
- ensure compliance with HMRC requirements, and
- ensure your business enjoys the maximum benefit of employee ownership.
Drawing on our extensive experience of providing the kind of precision engineering that underpins every successful employee-owned company, we’ll help you review your ownership structure, strengthen governance and ensure alignment between the board, trustees and employee owners.
Who is it for?
The Employee Ownership Healthcheck is for trustee boards and management teams of employee-owned businesses.
When might you need an Employee Ownership Healthcheck?
Our Employee Ownership Healthcheck can be useful at different stages of your employee ownership journey, including:
- A period after moving to employee ownership, once the business has had time to settle into the ownership change
- When changes are being considered to the directors or management team
- When there have been changes to the trustee board, or these are being planned
- You sense that something’s not quite working as well as it should but the cause isn’t immediately clear
- Tax rules affecting companies owned by an EOT have changed (this happened in November 2025 and may happen again)
- Where trustees and directors want to make sure they are working effectively together
- If concerns have started to arise about how employee ownership is working in practice
- If the business has completed payments to former owners and is entering a new phase
- If it is proving difficult to pay former owners according to the agreed timetable
What does the Postlethwaite Employee Ownership Healthcheck cover?
Every business is different, so we have a flexible service and will tailor your Healthcheck to your needs.
We’ll likely start by talking with your trustees and directors to understand how employee ownership is working in practice, what has changed since your EOT transition, any concerns about how well things are working and whether there are any areas where you need support.
We will review your current arrangements and provide practical recommendations to help strengthen your employee ownership model.
This may include:
- Potential changes to key documents and governance arrangements
- Advising on clarification of roles and responsibilities of trustees, directors and employee owners
- Advising on changes to tax rules and HMRC requirements
- Identifying areas where communication or decision-making could be improved
- Sharing employee ownership best practice and examples from other businesses
- Providing training and support for new trustees or directors
- Helping put practical improvements in place, such as updated guidance documents or employee engagement structures e.g. an employee council
Our aim is to make sure your employee ownership arrangements continue to work well as your business evolves.
Why work with us?
For over 20 years we have supported hundreds of businesses through their employee ownership journey and understand that the transition does not end when the EOT is completed.
We know the opportunities employee ownership can bring and understand the practical challenges that can arise as businesses evolve.
Our Employee Ownership Healthcheck gives you the opportunity to review where you are, address any issues and make sure your employee ownership model continues to work for your business and its people, ensuring:
- an effective board of trustees
- clear roles and responsibilities
- clear and effective employee engagement
- high quality decision making
- clean bill of health with HMRC
- workable payment terms to former owners
Talk to us
If you would like to find out more about our Employee Ownership Healthcheck, get in touch with our team by calling 02038189420, emailing info@postlethwaiteco.com or fillout the 'Get in touch' form at the top of this page.