Hi ^redacted‌, timing and compliance are important- there are a lot of compliance requirements to various employee ownership opportunities. There are several ways you could structure this, including through bonus incentives, phantom equity, profit interests (if using an LLC), and stock options, among others. These options come with different legal considerations, so it’s important to think about how interests are managed. Most people don’t realize how many ways there are to incentivize employees other than through an ESOP and it's helpful to find a solution that fits the company’s size and desired cost of implementation and management. We also discuss the legal aspects of M&A in our podcast, Dealmaking with Laura DiFrancesco, available here deanstreetlaw.com/links

If you're still looking at this, you could reach out to one of the employee ownership nonprofits in the EO space for guidance, like the National Center for Employee Ownership, Project Equity, or Democracy at Work Institute