EY Accelerates Transformation at English Tea Shop Organic Using Full ESOP Model – Business News

The fireside conversation announcing the second phase of ETS ESOP – Arjuna Herath, Senior Partner and Head of Consulting, Ernst & Young, Sri Lanka and Maldives (left) and Niluza Badurdeen, Director Strategy, English Tea Shop Organic

Amazon Trading Ltd.’s English Tea Shop Organic (ETS) brand, established in 2010, has been on a transformation path since the implementation of a company-wide open book management program in 2015.
This was followed by a unique Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP) launched in 2019 to help build a “largely employee-owned organization.”
ETS says it believes employees empowered by open book management practices generally think, feel and act like business owners and help build successful organizations.
Therefore, its employees engage in the analysis and interpretation of financial statements in their weekly meetings and also participate in high-engagement scenario planning, problem-solving mini-games, and implementation. place of innovative dashboards that help improve business performance.
Phase 1 of ESOP in 2019 saw the company grant 15% of the equity stake to employees. ETS has just announced the launch of the second phase of the ESOP, increasing the actions allocated to employees by up to 30%, thus accelerating the process of achieving the ESOP. the company significantly
employee-owned business.
The benefits of moving to this model are already paying off, with the company having successfully weathered the impact of Covid-19, demonstrating strong resilience and growing rapidly.
ETS’s aspirations to do things differently by placing the goal and the well-being of people at the heart of its strategy have flourished further thanks to a strong partnership with the specialists in employee share ownership plans (ESOP) of Ernst & Young (EY) as advisers. The company mantra “Love and Prosperity Through Community” has served as a model on the path to success in the specialty and natural food markets in more than 50 countries.
ETS has won leading international awards for its approach to sustainability, including the Queen’s Award for Sustainability (UK) 2020 and the Great Game of Business (USA) All-Star International Champion in 2020. The company continues to achieve numerous accolades for his ambitious, transformative journey to inspire his community of tea lovers.
The ETS ESOP was a bespoke effort of EY to create an inclusive culture and express good faith in recognizing and rewarding the efforts of staff by allocating a stake in the capital of the company given their length of service, their individual performance and their level of importance in contributing to the creation of wealth for the organization.
The initiative also opened doors for the voice of staff to be represented at the board level. It will further allow the business to make difficult decisions such as forgoing short term benefits to achieve longer term goals, with broader support.
In a recent fireside chat announcing ESOP Phase 2, Ernst & YoungSenior Partner and Consulting Head for Sri Lanka & Maldives Arjuna Herath said: – Based on incentive plans, ETS has taken the initiative to generously allocate 30% of the total issued share capital of the company to a Trust, the beneficiaries of which are employees, at zero cost, thus respecting its commitment to its founding objective. It’s even more remarkable that even their workshop-level employees qualify for this program after only one year of service!
Participating in the fireside discussion, Niluza Badurdeen, ETS Strategy Director, said that “one of the most pressing challenges on the planet is increasing social inequalities; it is probably the greatest emergency for countries in the southern hemisphere. One of the main goals of ETS is to be a catalyst to solve this problem even in our industry.
ESOP has helped us move closer to our goal of sharing wealth by becoming an employee-owned business. By empowering our employees with knowledge and turning them into business people through our ‘great game’, we believe this will truly increase their passion and commitment by extending great value across our value chain and by creating a net positive impact on society and the environment in general. “