Co-ownership: a common purpose
Being a Partnership is about much more than sharing profits; we share a common purpose. Our Partners are all owners of the business and with ownership comes responsibility, as our success rests on providing the best-quality products and services to our customers.
As a result of increasing interest in our business model, we produced a guide to employee ownership and are helping other companies to learn more about the benefits of co-ownership. See Collaboration and influence.
Research by Cass Business School indicates that employeeowned businesses are more resilient and stable, have outperformed the market during the downturn and create new jobs more quickly than conventionally structured businesses. They demonstrate the same levels of profitability, but deliver better customer satisfaction.
An assessment by nef consulting also found that our Partners have a higher sense of wellbeing than the average employee, supported by the Partnership’s unique ownership and governance structure.
Our Partner Strategy
We want our Partners to have a clear sense of direction. To achieve this, our Partner Strategy defines three Commitments:
* Take responsibility for our business success – by delivering the right experience for all our customers and generating profits for us all to share.
* Build relationships powered by our principles – by demonstrating honesty, respect and encouragement at all times.
* Create real influence over our working lives – by taking every opportunity to develop ourselves, balance work and life priorities, and support each other.
To motivate and engage Partners on these Commitments, we ran a competition to make a Partner-led film about them. We also produced support materials for managers in our branches such as a board game, leaflets and posters. In 2011/12, we will consider further activities to continue the momentum behind this engagement, as well as helping us to explain to new joiners what it’s like being a Partner.
The success of the Partner Strategy centres on maintaining a clear view of what Partners feel about their experience of the Partnership. We need to make sure that this experience is relevant, rewarding and effective in encouraging Partners to demonstrate their responsibility as co-owners.
When John Spedan Lewis, our founder, set up the Partnership, he established a Constitution to govern it. The first principle states that the Partnership’s purpose is to ‘balance the happiness of all its members, through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in a successful business’.
83% of our Partners would recommend the Partnership as a great place to work
18% of annual salary paid as a bonus to Partners in March 2011
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