Making Employees Owners

This is the eBook version of the printed book.

This Element is an excerpt from Do the Right Thing: How Dedicated Employees Create Loyal Customers and Large Profits (9780132343343) by James F. Parker. Available in print and digital formats.

How to get employees to think like owners (stock helps, but it’s just part of the story--here’s the whole story).

The first year Southwest made a profit, in 1973, it celebrated by creating the airline industry’s first employee profit-sharing plan. From a modest beginning, the plan’s value has grown to about $2 billion. Southwest employees, as a group, are probably the airline’s largest single shareholder: they don’t just think like owners; they actually are owners....