Pickens Technical College’s Small Business Management: Could Employee Ownership Take Hold in Colorado?

In Pickens Technical College’s Small Business Management program, you’ll learn how to start and successfully manage a small business. You can use this education to start your own venture, consult with other businesses, or join a company looking for leadership. Small Business Management at Pickens gives you the freedom to learn how you want to manage a business and lends you the tools to think outside the box. 

One way that many businesses are re-thinking how they’re organized and managed is by eliminating the CEO or the owner. Essentially, more businesses than ever before are setting themselves up as worker-owned companies, particularly in Colorado. 

Support for Employee Business Ownership in Colorado

There are already numerous examples of worker-owned businesses right here in Colorado. Elvan Goksu and Umit Kaya founded Happy Ladybug Early Learning in Aurora with the dream of making their employees part-owners of the company. They want to share in the decision-making and let their workers, teachers, and early childhood educators, in this case, take a stake in the company.

Goksu and Kaya haven’t fully transitioned to this new model yet, but they want to bring their employees into the ownership club because they hope it will reduce teacher turnover and remove some of the day-to-day responsibilities off Goksu’s plate. 

Colorado governor Jared Polis applauds the efforts of business owners like Goksu and Kaya because he believes that some form of employee ownership, from full-fledged cooperatives to stock options, improve pay and working conditions, reduce income inequality overall, and allow retiring entrepreneurs another option for passing their company down. 

Polis and his Democratic colleagues in Denver aren’t the only ones to champion employee-owned business models. Even Republicans have traditionally supported this notion. President Ronald Reagan himself even called employee-owned businesses “a path that befits a free people,” in the 1980s.

Something to Consider

People get into business for different reasons, but the primary reason for most entrepreneurs is to make money. Employee-owned businesses are being championed by the government and by local entrepreneurs because these models work well. Workers will simply try harder to help the business if they feel they are a part of the business itself. Owning a stake in a company makes it in their best interest to come to work every day and give it they are all. 

In Pickens’ Small Business Management course, you’ll learn all kinds of business models that work well. As more businesses pop up all over the state, you’ll have a chance to one day differentiate yourself from the crowd by setting up a plan that benefits the employees and the customers they serve. Small businesses are well-supported in this state, with a wealth of resources available to them. If you want to set up your own employee-owned business, you’ll no doubt get plenty of support from a community around the state that loves employee-owned organizations. Think about how you want to organize the perfect company around your goals and dreams.