AACE

Annual Awards for Communication Excellence

BBC Earth Presents: DAS ESOP during Covid

As Covid exploded, the majority of our workforce transitioned to work from home. This internal video was created to ensure all employee-owners were aware of the changing nature of our environment while also hoping to solicit a chuckle during a dark time.

Video Entries

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2021 AACE ENTRIES

Mr. ESOPs' Neighborhood

A tribute to the iconic childrens' show, Mr. ESOPs' neighborhood was created as a fun-loving way to present some basic information about our ESOP to our employee-owners.

New Hire Onboarding: our ESOP

All new hires are treated to meeting "Flat Dougie", our ESOP mascot. He's named after our former owner, Doug Schukar, aka "Round Dougie". This video is an excerpt of a much longer, more detailed onboarding session that explains the intracacies of our ESOP. Last year we submitted a large entry detailing "Flat Dougie's" inception and travels.

To find out more about "Flat Dougie" see our 2020 AACE Flat Dougie entry here!

Website Entries

Hover to learn more about our ESOP Intranet page and our ESOP Recruiting Website.

ESOP Recruiting Website

Being an ESOP is one of our top recruiting tools and what better way to express the benefits of employee-ownership than to build a website! This interactive site delves a bit deeper into the benefits of ESOPs while keeping the content light and fun. Make sure to check out the statement explainer!

Visit Site

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Our ESOP Intranet Page

The section of our intranet devoted to our ESOP is meant to inspire and inform, a repository of fun and informative content. Our employee-owners can find everything from our Plan Summary to our collection of "Flat Dougie" photos!

Poster Entries

Scroll through the 4 poster entries to view this series of motivational art that was created to remind our employee-owners that despite a pandemic and the adversity that accompanies it, we all have an active stake in our continued success.

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ESOP Recruiting Website

Annual Awards for Communication Excellence

2020 AACE ENTRY

Meet Flat Dougie

Flat Dougie is our ESOP Mascot.

Flat Dougie is named after our former President, Doug Schukar who now refers to himself as “Round Dougie.”Our co-owners take their Flat Dougies all across the world with them. Flat Dougie has been to Rome (twice!), Ireland, Brooklyn, NY and many, many, many more locales!

He ended up making SO many trips, that we had to come up with a way to keep track of his travels.

What to do?

We made a Flat Dougie Tracker.

Every time someone sends in their Flat Dougie photo, a “polaroid” goes on the tracker, and a pin goes into the map location.

Our Flat Dougie Tracker hangs in our Onboarding Room where every new employee spends their first week of employment at USA Mortgage. Most employees probably want to get completely away from work when they go on vacation. But our co-owners take Flat Dougie with them.