The Industry Club and The Industry School Is Now Employee Owned

The Industry Club and The Industry School has transferred 100% of the shareholding to an Employee Ownership Trust, equitably benefitting all the staff now, and into the future.

Managing director, Melissa Smith, says, “We made this decision primarily to protect the future of the business, ensuring that our culture and values remain in the hands of our team, and to provide opportunities for them and future employees to grow into confident owners and managers and spearhead the next chapter of The Industry Club’s life.

“I’m tremendously proud of what we’ve achieved over the last 13 years, and I can see no better way to celebrate those achievements than by transferring the shareholding and championing the people who have contributed to our success so far.

”Employee Ownership Trusts are becoming an increasingly popular model for founders and business owners to exit their businesses. But they also offer a whole host of benefits to their employee-owners including greater productivity, more investment in R&D, and more attention to D,E&I."

Reasons for the transition

Typically, transitioning to an EOT is seen as a means to manage a smooth and structured succession for business owners. “Working as we do, as a closely knit team of recruitment specialists with defined desks and responsibilities, this decision doesn’t overly affect business as usual,” Melissa comments. “In fact, our transition to employee ownership represents a real and very exciting opportunity to deepen our collaborative approach.”

But there are no plans for an immediate exit. In time, Melissa will step away from the role of MD, but for the time being, she’ll stay in post to run the business and its training arm, The Industry School.

What we’ve done so far

Since the official documents were signed we’ve invested time to get together and discuss plans moving forward. “We really have engaged with the task ahead of us. We’ve invested time and effort into understanding and defining who we are as a team, looking at our culture and our values, determining how we make this succession plan as successful as we can,” says Melissa.

Mandy Daniel, finance manager, says of the process, “It’s been eye-opening to see how employee-owned trusts run, and the work we’ve done has made us really think about who we are, where we want to be and the tools we’ll need along the way. But more than that, it’s made us realise what a great team we are, and I feel very lucky to be a part of that, and I’m excited for the future.”

Zoe Edwards, an ex-Publicis business director, who has run the strategy and senior client services desk for the last seven years, echoed some of Mandy’s comments, “we’ve had a chance to start to imagine the exciting future ahead of us as an employee-owned business, as well as a chance to reinforce what makes us different as a recruiter in the creative industry.”

Future plans

For the time being, it will continue to be business as usual, whilst in the background the team will be making plans for Melissa’s succession and forming a leadership team to help shape accountability and responsibility moving forward “I’m not ready to go quite yet, I will be in the business for at least another five years,” says Melissa, “there’s a lot of work to do. It’s tough out there at the moment, and it’s an increasingly competitive market.

Thankfully, we know which direction we’re travelling in, I have confidence in our team, and believe that our collective ownership gives us the best possible platform to get to where we need to as a business, and to deliver for our clients of both The Industry Club and The Industry School.”