by John Cervetto, Chief Operating Officer

As RDA Consulting begins 2024, we both mark one year since RDA transitioned from a privately-owned business to an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) and forty years since the founding of RDA in 1984. Our first year as an employee-owned business has been defined by developing new processes and practices around governance, budgeting, and profit sharing that are in line with employee ownership.  Two issues that I have been working on as RDA’s COO are Participative Budgeting and Profit Sharing.

We began work on our 2024 operating budget in fall of 2023, putting together a preliminary document with estimated expenses and revenues for the coming year. We then asked the entire staff to comment on business needs and make suggestions for budgetary priorities and items via RDA’s asynchronous feedback method. Over a two-week period, we asked all RDA staff members to post (internally) their suggestions for 2024 budgetary priorities and items that they would like to see in the budget.

We then took the staff input to RDA’s Leadership Team where it was vetted, with the goal of right-sizing the document. Many, but not all suggestions were accepted. Some that were approved and added to the budget are professional development stipends, data visualization training, and new software licenses. RDA’s Leadership Team also reviewed and suggested items and categories that aligned with RDA’s 2024 objectives, including: cohort-based trainings, software updates and laptop upgrades, increased administrative support, internal Organizational Development initiatives, and a myriad of other budgetary priorities that reflect the opportunities and challenges facing all mission-based social purpose corporations. Working with RDA’s Board of Directors, we continued to right size the budget that reflected investments in revenue generation and building RDA’s staff capacity.

Employee profit sharing is another initiative that we undertook as part of our transition to the EOT model. We established an annual profit-sharing plan with a planned 2023 distribution to be made towards the end of Q1 2024. We wanted all employees to be eligible for profit sharing, while also considering each individual employee’s length of employment with RDA and their position within the company. In that way, equity goals are met by ensuring that all RDA employees benefit from profit sharing and retention efforts are advanced by rewarding employees who make their career with RDA a long-term endeavor.

To review our journey as an Employee-Owned Trust, please check out the blog page on the RDA website.