• Business Readiness Factors: Help businesses figure out how ready they are, and how they can set themselves up for a smoother and more successful transition to worker ownership
• Motivations: Core reasons that business owners and employees decide to convert to a worker coop
• Typology of Conversions: Four different types of worker coop conversions based on the situation of the owners and its employees
• Case Studies: A dozen case studies of businesses that have converted to worker cooperatives

This resource uses diagrams to depict how the different forms of employee ownership are structured. It focuses on the two primary vehicles for broad-based employee ownership in the United States: worker cooperatives and employee stock ownership plans.

The idea of selling a business to its employees and converting it to a worker owned cooperative is gaining traction as a viable succession strategy. It is a strategy that saves jobs, builds community wealth, and empowers workers to own and manage their own business. Worker cooperatives differ from other business entity types in that they are owned and democratically controlled by their workers, and workers share in the risk and reward of operating the business.

This research paper summarizes an examination of the National Establishment Time Series (NETS) dataset for North Carolina and Iowa to gauge the potential for conversions of existing businesses to worker cooperatives. The data demonstrate that the potential is quite large, and that even if only a fraction of these successfully converted to worker ownership and continued to operate at their last year levels, there would be meaningful economic impacts.