It is clear COVID-19 has transformed the way employees engage with their paymasters. Remote working, talent shortages, asynchronous office hours and wage subsidies are just some of the economic and employment consequences of the global health crisis that has redefined the way we work.
Yet while the design sector, unlike the hospitality or tourism industries, may have escaped the worst of the negative economic impacts wrought by the pandemic, uncertainty around future job stability, as well as the difficulties faced in selling design businesses, has allowed the topic of employee ownership to gain traction.
A growing trend
An alternative to traditional hierarchical architecture practice, employee ownership in itself is not a complex system. It can be direct (where employees become individual shareholders), indirect (where shares are held collectively on their behalf, usually by an EOT
