 Now, who owns the business you work for? For about 250,000 employees, rough estimate, they do. I mean, the workforce owns the company. It's called employee ownership. A trend for people to own their own companies, or companies they work for, really took off in 2014 when the coalition government introduced another tax breaks, which helped companies make their change. Now, the Employee Ownership Association is asking for more help, saying these kinds of companies have more motivated, happier workforces, they've got less staff turnover, they've got greater productivity, they're more resilient to downturns. Let's find out why and more. Deb Oxley is the Chief Executive Employee Ownership Association. First, let's look at what happened in 2014, because that rather changed everything with the finance act then, didn't it? It gave tax breaks, and it really made people want to do this, to actually change the companies into employee ownership companies, didn't it? Yeah, good afternoon. It certainly did. The tax incentives have been very important in helping to raise awareness of employee ownership, but what we're calling for today is an investment by the government of about £2 million in order to grow and expand the voluntary growth of employee and worker ownership, so that there can be an ownership dividend for a million UK workers across the country. Yes, but I think my point really is, why should an employee or an employer, sorry, do this? I mean, what's in it for them? And it is to do with this act, isn't it? They gave them a tax break. Can you explain what that tax break was? Yeah, well, the reason many owners want to move to employee ownership or many entrepreneurs want to start a worker co-op is because what they want to do is share, having a stake and a say with all employees, which, as you said earlier in your introduction, is proven to deliver higher levels of productivity, stronger levels of resilience in the business. And these are businesses that actually give more to the local communities in which they're best. What I say is that the shareholders, the original shareholders who want to sell the company, they usually sell it to a trust, don't they, which holds them on behalf of the employees, in most cases. They actually get a tax break in terms of, they don't pay any capital gains tax, do they, on the money which they make from that sale to the employees? That's right. If owners opt for the employee ownership trust model, which is the 2014 legislation you mentioned, then they don't pay any capital gains tax on the proceeds of the sale. But equally, the employee owners, who are the new owners of that business, also get a good tax advantage from tax-free bonus payments in the future. So it's a win-win for both the owner and the future employee owners. They can make something like £3,000 extra a year, can't they, tax-free? Yeah. If a company's doing well. Of course, if a company's doing badly, they do have to take some of the pain. I mean, I know, for instance, John Lewis has had the lowest bonuses, their employees have had the lowest bonuses in what, 60 years or something, when things go badly. Yeah, the evidence is that the majority of businesses that become employer-earned actually experience a woosh effect of positivity straight afterwards, because when the employees are more engaged, they're putting in more discretionary effort. Actually, what you see is a direct impact on the bottom line, which collectively, when you get a number of these businesses in the same region, you end up with some strong regional economic performance, which is why we're calling for the government today to invest in the spending review in the voluntary expansion of worker and employer-earnership in the future. Dev Oxley, thanks very much indeed for joining us.