by all or most employees (or on their behalf by a trust). There are three basic forms of employee ownership: direct ownership of shares by all employees as individuals; indirect (or trust) ownership on behalf of all employees by the trustee of an employee trust; and the hybrid model which combines both direct and indirect ownership. In addition, the employees’ stake must give employees a meaningful voice in the company's affairs by it underpinning organisational structures that promote employee engagement in the company. Employee ownership can be seen as a business model in its own right, in contrast to employee share ownership which may only provide selected employees with shares in their company and an insignificant overall shareholding. In the UK organisations such as the Employee Ownership Association (EOA), Scottish Enterprise, Wales Co-operative Centre and Co-operatives UK play an active role in promoting employee ownership. An employee controlled company is a majority employee-owned company. This might arise through an employee-buyout. This can be set up through an employee ownership trust. Employee-owned companies are totally or significantly owned (directly or indirectly) by their employees. Different forms of employee ownership, and the principles that underlie them, have contributed to the emergence of an international social enterprise movement. A public service mutual, by definition, has a significant degree of employee ownership, influence or control, but most public service mutuals identify themselves as social enterprises rather than employee owned. A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and self-managed by its workers. It is a type of employee owned company that operates according to the international values of co-operation and adheres to an additional code, beyond the core international principles, focused on democracy and participation in the workplace. The most celebrated (and studied) case of a group of companies based wholly on co-operative principles is the Spanish Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. Spanish law, however, requires that members of the Mondragon Corporation are registered as self-employed and are not employees. This further differentiates this type of co-operative ownership (in which self-employed owner-members each have one voting share, or shares are controlled by a co-operative legal entity) from employee ownership (where ownership is typically held as a block of shares on behalf of employees using an employee ownership trust, or company rules embed mechanisms for distributing shares to employees and ensuring they remain majority shareholders). By country United Kingdom Employee Share Ownership Plans (ESOPs) became widespread for a