The EOA Annual Conference aims to bring together employee owners from across the UK to network with like-minded businesses, share good practices and celebrate employee ownership. This year, the conference comprised 30 seminars, workshops and panels, with topics such as 'Developing the next generation of leaders', 'Your roadmap to net zero' and 'Using employee ownership to attract & retain the people you need'. The keynote speaker was Futurologist John Vary from John Lewis, who shared interesting insights on what holds people back from sharing creative ideas and how to spot 'weak signals' about the future.

Quintessa has been employee owned from its inception so the EOA Annual Conference provides a great opportunity to celebrate the history and culture of the company, to share what works well for us, and to pick up ideas for how to enhance our employee ownership model further. Employee ownership benefits Quintessa's employees and clients in a huge number of ways, including long-term stability of the company, a culture of transparency and respect for others, and high retention of talented employees. This has allowed us to build trusted partnerships with our clients as evidenced by our high percentage of repeat business, over 90% last year, with almost 90% of our revenue from clients with whom we have been working with for 15 years or more.

Our favourite takeaway quote from the conference comes from Julian Richer (who founded employee-owned Richer Sounds): "you're always talking to the owner".