Even during the pandemic the UK has seen growth of employee owned businesses. Since 2017 there has been a 50% rise in the number of these organisations. In an employee owned business, each of the employees is a co-owner, with a shared responsibility for the business and a responsibility to put its success first. However, the shares are held in Trust on behalf of the employee, the beneficiaries. All employee owned businesses have an Employee Ownership Trust comprised of Trustees whose role is fundamentally to represent the interests of the co-owners and to ensure the company is run in their best interests.

The Growth in Employee Ownership Trusts has exposed a need for organisations and professional advisers to locate suitable Trustees. Russam, J Gadd Associates and the Employee Ownership Association have teamed up to offer the employee ownership market a brand-new recruitment service called the Employee Ownership Trustee Appointment Service (EOTAS), that will recruit Trustees for these organisations and which we will launch to the market in February.

These roles are normally remunerated. A Trustee needs to be approachable and to demonstrate that they have the best interests of the business and the people who work in it at heart. They need to be willing to talk to everyone and be a great listener. They will also be skilled in asking questions of the Board and challenging appropriately. Prior board experience more generally would be helpful as is the ability to analyse and extract relevant detail from financial and other reports, the confidence to ask questions of the Board of Directors/Leadership Team and to challenge appropriately.

If you believe you have the skills and qualities required and would like to be added to the database please log in to your account and select EOT as a work preference and upload your latest CV. Alternatively, please contact anna.henderson@russam.co.uk notifying her of your interest and attach your latest CV. We cannot at this stage guarantee the number of opportunities or that you will be selected to apply but we hope that you will consider signing up!