Ability to vote on how the business operates and things like compensation and benefits. Different employee owned businesses are governed differently, but in general, the employees have more control.
I work for a 100% ESOP and the only things we are able to vote on are mergers, ownership structure changes, liquidation, and dissolution. There are no other voting rights or board member nominations/votes.
I elaborated in a sibling comment, but this is just not necessarily true. Both employee owned companies I've worked for were effectively dictatorships where employees got exactly zero say in anything.
Employee-owned just means that employees are the shareholders.
