John Lewis is one of the UK's best loved businesses - both by its customers and staff. Partners' counsellor Patrick Lewis speaks to Jonathan Stapleton about how the retailer's employee-owned structure and wide-ranging benefits offering have engaged its workforce.
He adds: "This is where I think our organisation will always look at things slightly differently - with the shareholders and employees being one person.
"Whereas in a standard public limited company model, the interests of the shareholders might be different from the employees and therefore you get into a different type of debate."
Clubs and societies
One way this different type of debate manifests itself is in the range of clubs and societies the John Lewis Partnership has for staff - both at a local level and a partnership-wide level.
However, while John Lewis does provide partners with a framework that enable them to come up with ideas and then pursue them - and gives them some funding to get them off the ground - it is the partners themselves that come up with the actual ideas.
Patrick Lewis says: "The groups and the events that get organised are because individuals or groups of partners feel passionately about something and want to make it happen."
In the run-up to the Olympics, John Lewis has an initiative called Partners in Sport, which gives people the opportunity to have a go at a sport they have not previously tried or train up to be sports coaches and then use that coaching to help others.
Lewis says: "We have supported people who wanted to get a group together to have a go at a sport that they would not have tried before. So across the country, lots of different events have been happening and essentially the organisation has provided funding to help get those off the ground."
He cites one example of how this has helped others: "We have a couple who have just come back from South Africa where they have been coaching children to play football. So they have developed a skill themselves that they have really enjoyed and they have been able to use."
John Lewis also does a lot of work with a great variety of charities - and has a fund to subsidise secondments for individual partners to go and work for other organisations.
Lewis explains: "The individual partner has to bid - so they have got to identify an opportunity that they would like to go and support, explain to the trustees why it would be worth the trust supporting them, and then the trust funds their temporary replacement while they are on secondment. So if they are away for six months, then the trust funds their replacement."
He adds: "The benefit to the partnership is the strength of the bond that this creates with the partnership - but also that the individuals have developed skills and experiences on those secondments that are very valuable in the job that they have come back to do.
"So to us, it very much is a win-win."
Changing work patterns
However, in spite of the fact that the partnership's ownership structure means that it can sometimes be more flexible with regards to the costs surrounding a benefit, the business is still facing the same issues as many other firms - especially in the areas of changing work patterns, engaging younger workers and recruiting an ever more diverse workforce.
