If you work with a Crop Quest Agronomist or have just stopped by our website, you may have heard that we’re an ESOP company. Your thought may have been, that’s great, but that doesn’t really affect me.
We’re proud of being an ESOP, and we feel it’s important once in a while to talk about the great things we have going on at Crop Quest – not only for our employees, but just as importantly for our customers as well!
You see, ESOP stands for employee stock ownership plan, and by definition it’s an employee-owner program that provides a company’s workforce with an ownership interest in the company. By being an ESOP company, Crop Quest isn’t just unique among agricultural companies, but we’re very unique with how we are structured, when compared to other ESOP companies within any industry.
When Crop Quest started in 1992, we became a 100% employee-owned company. This means we were formed with no majority owner, but the entire company was set up to be owned by each and every one of the employees. This is what makes us so unique, since only 30 to 40 percent of ESOPs are 100% employee-owned, and rarely does an ESOP start up this way. That’s why we have the motto:
Employee-Owned & Customer Driven!
This sounds great and all for an employee, but what does that actually mean to a customer? It means that you don’t have just any ordinary employee working to enrich an owner, but you have an owner coming to check your fields each week. You have a company owner coming to your farm, knowing that if you succeed, we succeed – an owner knows this.
Doing business with an ESOP company means that you have more than just one agronomist working for you. You actually have an entire network of over 80 agronomists working for you, because at Crop Quest we understand the value of teamwork. Co-owners are not left to be stranded; we have a team behind us sharing their knowledge and experiences, willing to give a helping hand to see others in the company succeed – an owner sees this.
Being an employee-owned company allows us to have and retain happy employees. Crop Quest has its own unique culture that encourages each employee-owner to do their part in taking the company to the next level. This means your Crop Quest Agronomist has ownership in their job and their company – an owner gets this.
At Crop Quest we see the value in rewarding our employees with ownership. There are many benefits to being an employee-owned company and it’s just as important for our customers to know the value of working with an employee-owned company. At Crop Quest we know that it’s more than just a retirement account waiting for us; it’s a responsibility that we owe to our company and our customers – and at Crop Quest we own this.
