Co-operatives and mutuals have performed impressively in the recession, with turnover across the board up 9.6% since 2008, compared to a shrinkage of 1.7% in the UK economy. That resilience is also seen in start-up success: 98% of co-operatives are still trading three years after formation against 65% of ordinary companies.

Interesting fact uncovered from Dave Boyle:

“As well as advising businesses on employee buy-outs, Erdal has written a book about employee ownership, Beyond The Corporation. In the course of his research, he looked at small towns close to each other in northern Italy with similar demographics, economies and so on, where the only significant difference was that one, Imola, had lots of employee-owned businesses and nearby Sassuolo had none. Erdal found that life expectancy in Imola was two and half years longer than it was in Sassuolo. He attributes this to the fact that employee-owners are less likely to be made redundant and more likely to be better paid, both of which have major impacts on health and wellbeing, which in turn are crucial to longer life expectancy.

Intrigued, he mentioned the finding to the chair of the John Lewis Pension Fund, then using standard actuarial tables to calculate its future liabilities, assuming its partners would be just like the rest of us. But they weren’t. It was discovered that, on average, employees at John Lewis lived longer than people who’d worked in retail for non-mutual rivals.

Patrick Lewis, partner director at John Lewis, says: “Co-ownership leads to increased levels of productivity, low absenteeism, low staff turnover, higher levels of commitment and higher levels of wellbeing. Employees within our business enjoy a higher wellbeing at work than the national average.”