Apollo Employee Resources
What exactly is happening?
Apollo has been growing rapidly for years, bringing in more patients, clinicians, teammates, and referral sources. This growth has been led by Tejas and Trupti Kotecha, who are at a point where they need to bring in more leadership and have wanted to find an opportunity to share their ownership stake with the people who have made Apollo a success - every worker.
Tejas and Trupti met Obran Cooperative through Kaiser Permanente and have sold Apollo to the worker-owned Obran Cooperative. Obran Cooperative works with successful businesses like Apollo to help them scale and Obran does this by sharing ownership with workers at Obran’s businesses who elect to join in ownership. Yes, this means you have the opportunity to become an owner!
First, and most importantly, your job will stay the same. Trupti is taking on a new role as Senior Vice President of Growth where she will oversee billing and contracting. Celia will step into the Administrator role, and additional leadership will be recruited to support the business continuing to grow.
Why is this happening?
Trupti has been working incredibly hard for years, Apollo has grown, and it is time for Trupti to take a smaller role so that she can take more time to be with her family. As Trupti made this decision, she thought hard about the future she wanted to leave, and knew that she wanted the people who built the company, all of you, to be the ones to own the company moving forward. Trupti found Obran Cooperative, a partner providing a unique way to support growth and success—by transitioning Apollo into an employee-owned business. Obran has pioneered this work and knows that giving everyone ownership is the best way to grow while preserving operations and culture. This new model, Apollo as part of Obran Cooperative, will give all Apollo workers a stake in the value they create and will give the company a competitive advantage in recruiting and retaining. Where else can a home health professional have the opportunity to join an organization and receive an ownership stake?
I haven’t heard of people selling to their employees before, why is this uncommon? Selling a business to its employees is not common because it is rare that the employees can pool together enough money to buy the business. That is why Obran Cooperative was created. Obran’s mission is to put the engines of business to work for humanity, and Obran does this by finding high-impact companies, paying the current owners a fair value for the business, and moving the business into worker-ownership, sharing the wealth with everyone in the process.
What is happening to my job?
Very little will change about your job, and our goal is to make those changes positive ones! You will keep doing the same thing you are doing now and we want to spend time learning more about how you work so that we can make changes based on your needs. If you elect to become a member of Obran Cooperative (i.e. you choose to become a worker-owner), you will participate in profit sharing as well as in the governance of the company. That means you will be able to vote on who will be on the board, you can run to be on the board yourself, you can join one of the committees that oversees other things at the co-op, and you can vote on important business decisions.
About Obran
What is Obran Cooperative?
Obran is a worker-owned cooperative organization created to help workers and the communities they call home. We are structured as a democratically governed holding company and currently own a few businesses in staffing, logistics, and healthcare – and now your company! We are growing the cooperative by buying small businesses and inviting the workers of each business we buy to join. So Obran is owned by its workers, specifically the worker-owners from all of these businesses.
When workers decide to become members, they become owners of Obran Cooperative, which entitles them to a number of new rights and responsibilities. As a worker at any Obran company, you have the right to become a member of the cooperative, and if you do, you will be one of the new owners of your business and all of the other Obran businesses.
What does it mean to be a worker-owner or member? Do I have to join?
Being a worker-owner or a cooperative member means the same thing.
Worker-ownership is also about having your voice heard and your work recognized. All Obran members are eligible to run for the highest governing body (the Board of Directors) of both Obran and your company. You also get to vote in all future board elections as well as certain special member decisions. In addition, members can choose to participate in committees, groups that recommend new ideas to the Board about topics such as culture, finance, and governance.
To be clear, while access to Obran membership is your right, it is also open and voluntary. This means you do NOT have to join to continue your employment. That said, in other Obran businesses, many of the employees elect membership. We hope you will consider the opportunity and join!
Why is worker ownership a good thing?
Worker ownership is great because it deeply aligns the incentives of the people who share in the struggle of building an organization, i.e. you and your coworkers! Owning a part of the cooperative gives our people a sense of pride that we carry throughout our lives. Worker ownership is also just a fair thing to do. You work hard and you should see the benefits of that work.
How do I become a member and what do I need to contribute?
Once you decide to become a member, you elect membership by signing your membership agreement. This is available in your online member profile at member.obran.coop, by visiting www.obran.coop/membership, or we also have paper versions available. To activate your membership you must:
Buy a $250 membership share (payable over time)*
Sign a membership agreement
Contribute at least 1% of your paycheck to your Internal Capital Account**
Complete at least 10 hours of work at an Obran Cooperative company each year
Attend at least 3 member meetings (this includes Obran member meetings, governance meetings, and public business review meetings for your company)
Pass the initial 90-day member candidacy period (to gain voting rights)
Complete the 5-part Member Training curriculum (optional but strongly encouraged)
* All members of newly acquired businesses who elect membership receive a 1% pay raise to help offset the $250 membership contribution. In addition, you can pay it over time through paycheck deductions.
**Your 1% contribution is not dues - this money is yours! Your contributions sit in an Internal Capital Account with your name on it, and you can access it any time. As long as you keep $250, plus your 1% paycheck contributions in the account, your membership is active.
What do I get for membership?
Voting Power. You have the power to vote on major member decisions at Obran, and beginning next year, you will elect the board that oversees your company’s management. We also hope that you will feel invested in and supported by our dedicated people operations team. The organization exists to serve you and we believe you will feel that.
Variety of Member Benefits. These include home purchasing education and support, discounted financial planning services, and access to free personal enrichment classes through Masterclass. Over time we aim to offer more services like low-cost payday lending, a debit card account, and more.
Annual Member Rebate (profit sharing). Obran distributes our surplus profits to each worker in proportion to the amount they worked in a calendar year (this is your member rebate). This means if you work 40 hours/week, you will get twice as much as someone who works 20 hours/week. From CEOs to frontline workers we equitably share in the fruits of our labor.
Building Your Own Future. As a worker-owned cooperative, our goal is to make the business work for our workers. We are constantly looking for new and better benefits to provide to our members. That means we will be asking YOU what benefits would make your life better, and we will work to make them a reality. The organization exists to serve you and we believe you will feel the value of that through the improved experience you’ll feel as a member.
For the latest information on member benefits, see “Member Benefits” in the Obran Member Guide.
How does Obran have money to buy a company?
Obran was founded by a group of returning citizens who could barely make ends meet and understood that they were stronger together. Today we are over 300 workers and have many operating companies. We have done this by remaining frugal and by leveraging our shared resources. When Obran acquires a company we invest some of our own money (earned from our operations) and we borrow money from a bank or investors in order to pay the selling owner for the business.
We work with mission-motivated investors and banks who want to see worker-ownership grow and who give us good rates. These good rates mean that we can confidently pay back the money and build a sustainable operation! Often it takes about 5 years to fully pay off these debts and during those years we will likely see little surplus cash from that business unit. After the debts used to buy the company are fully repaid the overall cooperative will all be in a stronger operating position.
Obran Capital Accounts
Is there a minimum balance?
$250 + the 1% of your salary that is contributed each paycheck.
How much can I take out or how can I access my balance?
You can take out / access anything in surplus of your minimum balance. For example, rebates will be paid into your internal capital account. You will be able to take out any money above your minimum baseline contribution of $250. You also can send and request balances from other members' internal capital accounts.
So this is like a bank account that earns interest, right?
Well, yes and no! Your Internal Capital Account is not like a traditional savings account, CD, etc. Rather as a member of the cooperative when you purchase a member share (for $250) this opens your “owner's equity account” at the cooperative. As an owner you become eligible to receive an equal slice of any surplus cash from the business at the end of each calendar year in the form of a rebate.
Your internal capital account is where the cooperative will deposit those funds either as cash or as a note called a Written Notice of Allocation (like an I.O.U.). These funds are yours and you will need to pay taxes on them like you do with any income. So while you and every other member has one share that is worth $250 you will receive your fair slice of any surplus cash from the cooperative every year.
When I stop working for Obran, what happens to this money?
You have two choices:
You can liquidate your account. The Cooperative will refund your balance within 6 months of your last day of work with any Obran company.
You may alternatively roll your money into an investor account. The investor account doesn’t give you access to any member benefits, but it does provide an estimated interest return rate. For more information on investor membership, see here.
How are Member Rebates decided?
In a worker-cooperative “profits” are considered “surplus” and really is just money we have decided not to pay ourselves during the year. One of the primary jobs of the Obran Cooperative Board of Directors (the worker-majority board elected by all of us) is to make decisions on allocating our surplus. They make decisions on behalf of the membership and decide to do one of three things with any annual surplus:
Reinvest it into the business. We must maintain a minimum cash reserves to help during lean years or invest in a new business idea that we think will be beneficial in the long-term to the membership.
Invest in member benefits. These are benefits to all of us that improve our “use value” of our membership. These may be better healthcare benefits, more education resources, legal or finance supports - anything that we think would be good for our members and is an efficient use of our shared profits.
Issue rebate checks. Cutting checks to our individual members. This can take the form of either a direct allocation to your internal capital account or as a Written Notice of Allocation (like an I.O.U. from you to the cooperative that you can access when you leave membership).
When I receive rebates, how are they taxed?
These are taxed like income. You will get a Form 1099-PATR to report any rebate earnings.
When we have a year with losses what happens to my capital account?
Your capital account is your rights to surplus within the cooperative. This means when our businesses have surplus and we distribute that surplus your account balance goes up and you can access that either as cash or as written notice of allocation. When our businesses lose money in a given year, you will not see any rebates that year. In the case of a really bad year of losses the cooperative has a central reserve which we will draw down and the Board of Directors may also put a hold on any members requesting payouts from their Written Notices of Allocation.
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