Mission Health Makes Dramatic Move to Employee Ownership

Saying the move fits perfectly with Mission Health Communities and its core values, company President and CEO Stuart Lindeman detailed how employees are now transitioning to be the owners of the organization through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).

In an interview with Park Place, Lindeman spoke of the core values embodied in the CARES (Character-Attitude-Respect-Excellence-Service) mantra his company lives by and why being an ESOP is the best path forward to find and retain employees, as well as grow the company.

Based now in Tampa, Fla., but with long-term care communities in Kansas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, Mission Health presented the ESOP model to its 2,000 employees through a YouTube video, which can be viewed here.

To implement the change, Lindeman said the company’s owners sold the company to an ESOP Trust. They are not involved with the ESOP and have no shares. Unlike some ESOPs, the Mission ESOP is a 100 percent employee ownership model, not a partial ownership plan.

Why Now and Why Period?

To answer more questions on the ESOP, here is a Q&A between Park Place and Lindeman.

Park Place: Why did you take this step now?

Lindeman: It's been something we've been looking at and working on for a couple of years, actually, and the owners felt like this was the best way to complete the CARE’s value connection. We are very focused on CARES, and we thought this was the way to really complete that circle and create a true differentiator in the market.

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Park Place: How does an ESOP differentiate?

Lindeman: Obviously, we focus on our residents and our employees, but our owners are the employees now, and we feel like it makes a difference and it does. They will now see how they do things through the eyes of an owner. We often talk about owning your work, and now that is true on this new level.

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Park Place: How have employees reacted to the news?

Lindeman: They're really, really excited. They know that we spend so much time talking about values and CARES, so, they really get it. I think there's a lot of questions of course that people have. So, we've begun our educational work, and we've got different things rolling out about the ESOP every two weeks. It doesn't change what we do day to day. It doesn't take care of the residents and do what we do. But it's been really positive. And even the reaction from our vendor partners, our strategic partners, it's been really good.

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Park Place: How does it work?

Lindeman: First, this doesn't affect employee compensation. It's separate. It's part of the benefit plan, part of your retirement. You have to be here three years from this year going forward to be fully vested. Some ESOP plans will vest over six years, a little bit each year, but we decided to do zero to three years. It's really a compliment to their retirement.

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Park Place: What do you hope the ESOP will do for recruitment and retention?

Lindeman: This will help drive recruitment and recruitment retention across the board, not only for our nursing assistants and dietary staff, but for our management team, administrators, directors of nursing. It rewards the people who stay, and it really rewards our team. We've got a great team here already.

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Park Place: How does the ownership decision-making work?

Lindeman: We still have a board that is appointed by the trustee. The trustee represents the employees and is their voice.

Some other particulars of the ESOP for Mission Health:

- Mission employees who work over 1,000 hours in a year (starting in January 2027) are eligible to receive company shares.

- Allocations will be figured starting next year after the ESOP’s stock receives its first valuation following an audit.

- To be fully vested, employees have to stay with the company for three years. If an employee departs before hitting the three-year mark, they lose the ESOP benefit.

Comments or questions? Contact Patrick Connole at pconnole@parkplacelive.com.