Loadhog and Fellow Shieffield Company Land National Employee Ownership Honours

Out of the country’s best employee owned companies, Loadhog Limited, the reusable transit packaging innovator, and another Sheffield company lifted two of only seven national accolades in the 2013 Philip Baxendale Awards – the UK’s only awards for the employee owned sector, working in harness with the Employee Ownership Association.

Ed Stubbs, Loadhog’s managing director, received the ‘Outstanding Leadership Award’, and School Trends, the leading supplier of personalised school uniforms, the ‘Employee Engagement Award. The Loadhog award recognised Ed for leading the company’s culture of employee participation and engagement and his efforts to ensure the company’s employee owned vision remains as central to its development as sales, production and marketing.

James Sallows, Loadhog’s moulding team leader who nominated Ed, said: “Ed is a true ambassador for employee ownership. His embracement of the culture, coupled with his determination to promote it, is why employee engagement has been so widespread at Loadhog.”

Ed Stubbs said: “It is an honour to be nominated by a member of my team who I am very lucky to lead. I am a passionate supporter of the EOA’s work and it was fantastic to be part of the Baxendale awards and to see more award applications than ever, with two Sheffield companies coming away with honours.”

Baxendale Advisory managing director, Campbell McDonald, said: “The tremendous momentum behind employee ownership in the UK made this year’s Baxendale Awards the most competitive ever; meaning our winners should be especially proud of their achievements.” In its seventh year, there were more than 100 nominations for the 2013 Philip Baxendale Awards – almost double than 2012 – from a diverse range of organisations across the private and public sectors.

Loadhog is a sister company of Gripple Limited, which in 2011 set up GLIDE – Growth Led Innovation Driven Employee – to preserve and develop employee culture to ensure that the member companies can never be sold. GLIDE itself is an employee owned company with a board, of which James Sallows is an employee elected member, representing all shareholders working in its member companies who feel that they own their own company.