Employee ownership still needs a clear route for disagreement

I am CHRO of Velqani Industrial Brushes in Kollam. We manufacture industrial cleaning and finishing brushes at Kollam and Palakkad, with 710 employees and FY 2026 revenue of ₹182 crore. An employee ownership trust holds 51% of the company, working founders 29% and a regional investor 20%. I lead twenty-four people-function colleagues through four leads with ₹5.6 crore annual expense, reporting to CEO Anita Qorvashi. I am not a trustee or director. Ownership governance and employment responsibilities require their own clear processes.

My career began in recruitment coordination in 2003 and moved through factory HR, people-function leadership and a people-operations director role. The recurring question has been whether the person affected by a decision can understand and challenge it through an appropriate route. Employee ownership makes that question more interesting, not less necessary. A colleague can have an interest in the company's success while disagreeing with a supervisor's assessment. A proposed profit distribution can be welcome while remaining different from fixed monthly pay. A popular colleague may still need evidence of readiness before supervising a team.

The cases here concern those distinctions in a fictional manufacturer. We funded participation sessions that shift workers could attend, reassigned conflicted reviewers in a defined set of performance cases, clarified the status of a proposed discretionary profit pool and used observed supervisory tasks alongside peer feedback. These were internal decisions with costs and unresolved results. They do not describe a universal employee-ownership model, replace applicable employment processes or claim that participation, comprehension or selection exercises prove a broader legal or productivity outcome.

Current focus

I am examining where shared ownership language obscures the actual capacity in which a person is speaking or deciding. The work is to make participation, review and managerial responsibility clearer without pretending that every disagreement should end in consensus.

Conversations I welcome

I am preparing for a first non-executive appointment, provisionally eighteen days annually, subject to employer consent, further governance learning and company-specific relationship review.