Peter Cooper, Founder and now Chairman
Expertise, guidance and reassurance
Peter Cooper, founder and now Chairman of public and business provider Seetec, explains how J Gadd Associates helped the business to navigate its route to employee-ownership by asking the right questions.
Expertise, guidance and reassurance were the key attributes when J Gadd Associates was brought in to support public and business provider Seetec become employee-owned, helping the founder to successfully pass on the business and leave it in the capable hands of his employees.
Looking for the best
“I had been looking for some time to become employee-owned because, it tightly aligned to Seetec’s approach to business, our behaviours and values. Birketts our legal advisers for the transaction, recommended J Gadd & Associates to help us navigate and introduce to our Senior Management team the initial step toward employee ownership.
I met with Jeremy Gadd in summer 2019 to discuss how J Gadd Associates could help with our transition. I explained our plans and why we were thinking about becoming employee-owned. With Jeremy, we started to work through how we could capture the essence of our business in employee-ownership, also thinking about the impact on senior leaders as I exited the business.”
“J Gadd Associates didn’t come in with a set answer for us; their skill was in helping us to find our way through and understand the impact for our organisation. They asked lots of questions and aligned with our values. They understood the sensitivity around our transition and that it needed to be treated confidentially.”
Exploring opportunities
“ The next step was for J Gadd Associates to facilitate a workshop with our senior leadership team. This was the first time we had been able to meet with all the leads and explore with them what employee-ownership would mean on both a personal and organisational level. Their facilitation allowed us to be fully involved with the session and hear people’s concerns, exploring the opportunities for everyone and looking at what we value.”
John Baumbeck, Managing Director
“We had a good idea of where we really wanted to go and
J Gadd Associates helped us to consider the best route, not with a set answer, but helping us to find our way through and understand the impact for our organisation.”
PETER COOPER
Summary
J Gadd Associates (JGA) began working with Seetec in summer 2019 when its owner was exploring employee-ownership. Meetings with the owner, the Trust Board and senior leadership team explored the organisational and people impact of employee-ownership, preparing the business to lead the transition.
About Seetec
Seetec was founded by Peter Cooper in 1984 to deliver IT training to unemployed people in the local community and is now one of the leading public and business providers of skills, employment, health and offender rehabilitation in the UK and Ireland. Based in Essex, it became fully employee-owned in January 2020 and has 2,500 co-owners.
