Meet our founders
Martin Chadwick –Designing Platforms for Employee Ownership
Still We Grow was founded with a mission to fill a critical gap in the employee ownership landscape. While the employee ownership business model is growing rapidly in the UK, many businesses transitioning to Employee Ownership Trusts (usually known as EOTs)) lack ongoing advisory support beyond the legal and financial transaction. At Still We Grow, we believe there is a better way: combining multidisciplinary consulting with data-driven insights to help employee-owned companies thrive long after the transition is complete.
A career focused on performance and people
As Co-founder and Product Director at Still We Grow, Martin Chadwick brings nearly 20 years of expertise in user experience (UX) and design. His career spans apps, platforms, and branding across Human Resources tech, fintech, and the creative industries. Now, he’s applying his skills to one of the UK’s fastest-growing business movements: the employee ownership model.
A platform for sustainable EO growth
Martin’s professional roots are in design and digital products, but his projects have always centred on helping people make better decisions with clearer information. That ethos translates directly into the employee ownership (EO) space. And it’s why he’s particularly excited to be working on a community data and growth platform for the employee ownership community.
I think the employee ownership community could be served to a much higher level,” says Martin. “Whether that’s through having specific spaces for EO businesses that go beyond associations, the ability to benchmark their performance against other EO organisations, or connection opportunities with EO businesses in the same sector, there’s more that can be done.
Still We Grow’s proprietary SaaS solution will help employee-owned businesses or those considering transitioning to employee-ownership the tools, data and insights to make better decisions. Critically, by using a SaaS approach Martin and the wider team are making high-quality advisory support more accessible and affordable for employee–owned businesses that have typically only had external consultants to turn to.
Why data is critical for employee owned businesses
Like his co-founders Fran Spence and Matt Wilden, Martin sees the sale transaction as just the beginning. By building platforms and insights that make performance transparent, Martin believes EO leaders and employees alike can act with greater commercial confidence.
That’s why having a data-driven, ‘digital advisor’ platform is so important. Having an always-on benchmarking and advisory tool, grounded in real, anonymised EO business data, provides EO companies with actionable insights faster and more cost-effectively than a traditional consultancy model.
In particular, having access to those insights about the wider employee-ownership sector is critical for new leadership teams, who may be new to senior leadership and still learning how to motivate and engage the wider team within the context of employee ownership.
“It’s about giving people a clear understanding of how the business is growing. When people can see the impact of their effort, they naturally want to give back and help the business thrive.”
Enabling community for employee-owned businesses
Providing a digital platform offers another attractive bonus to employee-owned businesses: community. While the general public may be most familiar with big name retailers who are employee-owned (John Lewis, Lush, Richer Sounds and more recently The Entertainer) the employee ownership model is sector-agnostic. But the different realities of being employee owned can mean businesses struggle in isolation.
“By providing a platform that connects leaders, employees, and even whole organisations, we can help employee-owned businesses learn from each other, benchmark their progress, and feel connected as part of a wider movement,” Martin explains.
Ready to start your journey into employee ownership? Already proudly EO and interested in accelerating your growth through data-driven insights, multidisciplinary consulting and deep EO expertise? Contact us today.