Working with good people (part 2)

I posted about this yesterday and wanted to add some points. Over my career I have been exposed to a number of companies where people have been around a long time and grown up and developed their careers within the business. This is not necessarily a good thing as it does lead to a certain way of thinking and of doing things. Part of the reason that I left Pret after 9 years was that I felt that my thinking was becoming stale, I wasn’t developing as I was very comfortable within my surroundings and was not being challenged to think differently. This may surprise people as within my time at Pret I went from being an assistant manager to regional operations manager and did this in 7 years which is not bad going (I was making up for lost time as I was still an assistant manager at 31) and whilst it’s fair to say that I was certainly developed my thinking did not really move on until I left Pret and joined some different businesses over the years.
At this stage it’s worth pointing out that none of the above is a criticism of Pret, they have done a fantastic job of hanging onto loyal people whilst bringing in skilled external people into the business, I am firm believer that this is part of the reason that they have been so successful.
Of course, it’s easy to say that you need to work with good people but not always so easy to attract them to your business. Part of our challenge at BHS will be to attract people to a company that is not (not yet anyway) known for its food business. To counter this we have been working hard to ensure that we are completely honest with people, there is no overselling at all. The next thing that we are doing is going the extra mile to ensure that people new to the business are really well looked after, BHS is a great business in terms of how they treat their people and it’s up to is to ensure that people are aware of what a great place to work it is. The other selling point is that we are in a journey and that people who join us now will be playing a key part in this journey.