Enterprise innovation is an important basic force for promoting the stable growth of the national economy. Employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) have been effective in advancing corporate innovation, but analysts are concerned that as an important external oversight force, how it will play a role in the process has not yet been clarified. This paper selects A-share listed companies that implemented employee stock ownership plans from 2015 to 2020 as a research sample, takes analyst concerns as intermediary variables, and empirically studies the relationship between employee stock ownership plans, analyst concerns and enterprise innovation efficiency. The results show that the implementation of ESOP can improve the innovation efficiency of enterprises, and the implementation of ESOP multiple times can improve the innovation efficiency of enterprises. Compared with the application of state-owned enterprises, the implementation of ESOP in non-state-owned enterprises can help enterprises improve innovation efficiency; Further research found that enterprises implementing ESOP promotes the efficiency of enterprise innovation by increasing analyst attention. This study reveals the important role played by analysts in the process of ESOP promoting the efficiency of enterprise innovation, and verifies the signaling effect and corporate governance effect of ESOP, which has certain guiding significance for the practice of ESOP.