I worked for an employee owned manufacturing company for near ten years. The philosophy of our company was, "the essence of life is relationships".

The founder of the company was the only religious person I knew who actually followed it's teachings, he sold his stock to the company for less than it was worth until we were 100% employee owned. The stock price then shot up from $200 a share to $6k a share in ten years.

The company understood the importance of working ideas from the bottom up, (involving the lowest ranking employees just as much as the highest ranking). We understood the importance of company culture, and even had teams of people to make sure the needs of our employees were being met.

We had a supervisor who by all accounts was a fine supervisor on paper, however he rubbed every single employee the wrong way, he was a cunt if i may. With the support of all of us, we were able to, I don't want to say get rid of him, it sounds cold, but his name came up on our (truly anonymous) survey one year the company asked him to resign, and he did.

The owner passed away in 2018, and shit got squirrely from there, i left during the pandemic. CEO and highest ranking positions then changed hands to folks not there at the founding of the company, I felt the culture shifting and left due to personal reasons. The stock has since tanked.

I dont understand why these companies don't see the importance of uplifting their workforce.

I'll never find and employer like that again i think. It was a magical decade. Of course my stock is tanked now, im to be cashed out this year.

The ladder has been pulled right before my time my whole life so this osnt new. I went from having enough for a down payment on a house, and now i wont even beable to afford a car lmao.