I worked for a company that did this decades ago, its an industrial psychology op...

Gist is they brainwash employees with it, and I mean heavily, like with like workbooks and shit completely unrelated to your job and retreats with other ESOP companies to do cult rituals. No exaggeration.

Allegedly this helps with retention and wages, but then also the owners of the company get to use the employees retirement funds as exit liquidity by setting up an ESOP purchase plan and that is the employee ownership, buying your own company vs say a 401k or whatever