Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)

Benefits of Working for an ESOP Company

Sterling is proud to offer an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) to all employees. Sterling became an ESOP company in 2013 and since then, our stock value has grown by 1,093%.  (For more information on how the Sterling ESOP works, click here to visit the ESOP Connection Portal).

Providing exceptional benefits has been a core part of Sterling’s culture since our founding in 1969. We are committed to being an excellent employer, something you cannot do unless you care for your employees and their well-being. It is what set us apart when we started, and it sets us apart today. This is in large part due to our ESOP.

ESOP Video header

Businesses and Employees Flourish with Employee Ownership

Median wage income is 33% higher

Household net worth is 92% higher

Median job tenure is 53% higher

2% higher sales and employment growth year after year than non-employee-owned businesses.

In normal times, employee-owners are six times less likely to be laid off.

Statistics from research conducted by the National Center of Employee Ownership and Rutgers University.

3 Major Benefits for Employees

What does the Sterling ESOP mean to our employees? Let’s take a look at the three main benefits:

  1. No-Cost Retirement Plan – ESOPs typically do not require out-of-pocket expense from employee owners, and that is definitely the case at Sterling. Our employees receive a fantastic retirement option without investing any of their own money.
  2. A Second Retirement Option – Polls of ESOP Association members show that 93.6 percent of ESOP companies offer a 401(k) in addition to their ESOP. While many Americans (some estimate 40 percent or more) have no retirement savings at all, employee owners typically have two options for saving—and should be well positioned to capture the full 401(k) match offered by their ESOP companies.
  3. Stable Jobs – Executives in the ESOP community talk about being right-sized, meaning they do not have to conduct massive layoffs when times are tight. That anecdotal information is reinforced by research from the General Social Survey (GSS) showing that employee owners are 6.2 times more likely to avoid a layoff than employees at conventionally owned firms. So, not only do employee owners have two retirement plans, they also are more likely to keep their jobs.

Employees are attracted to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan

With advantages like these, it is no wonder that another GSS study found that 72 percent of Americans want to work for a company owned by its employees. As of 2020, 6,232 companies in the U.S. were at least 50% employee-owned, covering over 14 million employees. You might recognize the names of some of the largest employee-owned companies, and that list includes several of Sterling’s customers, such as S&C Electric and Hollister.

Sterling is proud to be an employee-owned organization. For more information about our ESOP benefit, please visit the ESOP Connection Portal or contact Tim Silkaitis, our VP of Finance, at tsilkaitis@sterling-engineering.com,

(source: https://esopassociation.org/articles/employees-love-esops-and-research-proves-it)

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