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GLIDE - Our Employee Ownership Model
Gripple is a 100% employee-owned company, meaning all of our people own shares in the business. This has been the case since 1994, and was formalized in 2011 with the establishment of GLIDE, an employee-owned group that represents all the shareholder members who work in its partner companies. GLIDE is an acronym of: Growth Led Innovation Driven Employee Company Limited. The partner companies that make up GLIDE include Gripple, GoTools, and LoadHog.
The beginnings of GLIDE...
Since the mid 1990’s, Hugh Facey, the founder and executive company chairman of Gripple Limited, has been examining ways to pass his legacy to subsequent generations of employees. Many considerations had to be taken into account, not least, the culture and how to instill our inherent values into everyone that works in the company, both now and in the future. Hugh Facey and subsequently, Roger Hall, vice chairman of Gripple Ltd, decided to make a gift donation of their personal shares to GLIDE. Their respective donations are being gifted annually over a ten year period, ceasing in 2021. These shares are known as ‘permanent shares’ and can never be sold. They are now generating significant revenue from dividends for GLIDE.
Growth Led Innovation Driven Employee Company Limited
What does GLIDE do?
GLIDE exists to preserve and develop employee culture; to look after the interests of its members and to generate engagement from everyone in their company. All shareholders of investee companies are automatically members of GLIDE. Irrespective of how many shares a member has, it’s one member, one vote, on GLIDE matters. GLIDE’s core objectives:
- To harness our unique culture and pass it on to future generations
- To act as a custodian/protector of its gifted share dowry from Hugh Facey and Roger Hall, and to ensure they are never sold
- To act as a market maker in the buying and selling of members’ shares
- To exercise its right to use the ‘Golden Share’, in order to prevent the break-up of companies for the sole purpose of profit
- To establish an employee elected board of directors to represent its members
- To charge the board with the responsibility of determining the best way to distribute dividend income from the gifted shares on behalf of their members
The benefit of GLIDE and Employee Ownership for our customers
The culture of employee ownership has had a significant impact on our business’ growth and constant evolution. Giving all of our people direct responsibility and encouraging active participation across every area of the business ensures we’re empowering everyone to drive improvements, and ultimately, success directly affects us all – it’s in all our best interests to keep delivering and improving our business.
Having engaged owners across every department of the business, from production, to sales and technical, to product design, gives a commitment to the quality of our product and service offering that our competitors simply can’t match. We’re all working towards the same targets and we all benefit when we meet them so the focus on maintaining high standards is consistent at all levels.
Investee companies that are also part of the GLIDE group include our diecasting and tooling suppliers as well as precision measurement services, our own machine design business, and our sister company – a returnable transiting packaging manufacturer. This model gives us excellent control of our supply chain and ensures stringent quality checks, consistent output and timely delivery which, for our customers, means a smoother order process, faster lead times and consistently high quality products.
A key role of GLIDE is to continuously challenge the member businesses against key objectives – sustainable growth and new product innovation are two key elements. The business is always striving to achieve better products and better processes for the benefit of our customers.
Group Companies
Gripple
Market leading manufacturer of time and labor saving solutions for construction and agricultural industries.
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GoTools
One of the leading tool makers in the UK, suppling precision tooling to work in high volume and demanding environments.
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Why use Gripple?
- Significant time and cost savings on your project
- Complete, off-site solutions which minimize health and safety concerns
- Innovative, patented solutions designed by an in-house team of engineers
- Considerable reductions in packaging, vehicle movements, and embodied CO2
- A range of support services at every stage of your project, provided by a dedicated technical team
- Aesthetically pleasing solutions, lightweight, and virtually invisible