Julian Richer: What is the Good Business Charter Soundboard Edit

Actually, this is worth shouting about. There's a story here that actually by getting the best out of people, is that women for Everybody. And I wrote a book called The Richer Way, which is a bit o...

And after that, we're talking about less than a pound per colleague per year per employee per year in the immortal worlds of Gerald Ratner, if any of you are old enough to remember him.

And he asked me to come and help him. I had a little bit of press for my business. Being a bit eccentric, used to have a Rolls Royce we gave to the store, which gave the best customer service.

And I got annoyed about this and I started reading about capitalism. And I'm not an academic, but I can read. I read a few books about it and and something was ****ling at me, I just thought.

And I think too many people are getting away with it. I haven't got time now to go into it, but there's plenty of work done on the subject. There's definitely improvements need to be made to our ta...

And I went to a mate's father to lend me some money. He told me to buzz off and said we didn't have a chance. I remember his words. He said throw in the towel, sign you've had it. And I didn't take...

And it provides the goods and services we all love and need, Adam Smith said 250 years ago. He said it's not the benevolence of the Brewer, the butcher, the Baker.

And that indeed as the call their staff colleagues as well. Now after my visit and he can't sign a birthday card for 70,000 people, but a lot of the stuff he did at that very successfully now after...

And the business has stood the test of time. I was 62 two weeks ago. So I've been running my little business isn't quite so little. Now we have 52 stores and 200 million turnover and we're really v...

And then I read a book when I was 23, in 1982, called In Search of Excellence by two American academics, one's called Tom Peters and the other Rob Waterman.

And they analyze the most successful coverage in the States and what they discovered. The only commonality between these widely different businesses, which is relevant today because we have a widel...

And they're not just picking on the good guys to get more tax out of out of us, you know we should go after the huge tax gap in the country etcetera, etcetera. So the government's got its work to do.

And thirdly, they would have a short term cost advantage by paying their staff much less than we did. OK, they they might make more money in the short term, which they thought was very clever. But ...

And we would show that I only achieved the latter at that point, you know, I I was unknown, but I wasn't rich either. And from that moment that was a turning point in the organization. We started s...

Because other schemes have got sort of, you know, 50% mate and you're in, you know, will get you under the wire. We said no, no, no, we want to have the integrity #2 is it's really quick to join. S...

But I maintain that they have an obligation to society for the infrastructure they use on a on a daily basis, be it the roads or the police, to protect their property or the schools.

But just try it. OK, so I believe by being a responsible capitalist, responsible entrepreneur, responsible business will actually reap dividends.

But the biggest benefit is to help the public decide where to spend their money, and the businesses are going to receive that cash. That's the most exciting thing for me, and I have a dream that.

Capitalism, of course, got a bad Rep, bad history. But at the same time, we need it. So the only way to make it acceptable is to do it responsibly. So what's to be done? There are three things, I t...

First of all, it gives a pat on the back recognition, in other words, to all of us who are trying hard, working hard to do the right thing. And I think that's nice to have because whenever we pick ...

For the month. And we had a bit of publicity with this. Anyway, he'd heard about it and asked me to come and help him. And the interesting thing was that the stuff I did in our little business.

I started getting annoyed about what I would read about bad bosses, these monsters out there, and I thought, first of all, they're giving us all about name and a lot of.

I think businesses can do more and and the point here is not me telling them off like a school teacher. The point is is me recommending they they follow my experiences. You know, reading social exc...

I think the government has to do a lot more, has to be much tougher on businesses. I'm not into football but I'm fully aware that if there weren't rules on the football pitch, after 30 seconds they...

I think the public have to do their bit as well and this is the this is where we start moving into the Good Business Charter. So the public wants to spend their money with responsible businesses. A...

I wanna talk a bit about my business background first. Then I wanna talk about the benefits of what we call responsible capitalism. Because I believe not only is it great for society in general ter...

In 10 years time, you know half the High Street be busy and they'll be the one sporting the good business charter logos, so in their windows, on their vans, on their leather heads and of course on ...

In history, the 1st of February last year just before COVID. In spite of that we've seen tremendous interest particularly you know in this new year since January it's.

Is it fair to expect to be accepted and tolerated And I think that's the balance here that I'm trying to go for the the way I describe this is is responsible capitalism.

Is that most businesses have what they call shrinkage or theft, and in retail it's pretty big. It's between one and 2% of their turnover.

It demonstrates the fantastic financial returns to those businesses. So now we're we're sticking our toe in the water of responsible capitalism. What we're saying here is that by investing in people.

It's important that charities are well run. So we've had Oxfam sign up and Amnesty and trust or trust etcetera. So lots of exciting, you know it's it has started the trains, left the station, but w...

It's particularly beneficial by the way we think for businesses. So the signpost is there to help the public. What it does is directs the public to your doors. I think it's got two other benefits a...

Learning that valuable lesson and recommend the book to anybody. And then I met a guy called Archie Norman who'd moved to Yorkshire to run a company called Asda.

Literally tremendous across the board, small organisations with five employees, bigger organisations with 50,000, I mean really, really exciting to see and also we're open to charities cause.

More than 70% of the entire workforce use at least one holiday home per year, so it's not just a, you know, a home for the directors playing golf in Marbella. It really is a widely used benefit.

Now our shrinkage is infinitesimally small, way under .1 of a percent, actually. Now we provide holiday homes for our colleagues. We have 12 of them at the moment.

Ours is good. It's got real integrity because we have 10 components. We will not let organizations sign up unless they take all ten boxes. Now the level of adherence.

Ours is less than an hour. If you can tick those boxes, you know you can do it in under an hour, all online. If you need any help or advice, we're there to help you. And thirdly, it's really cheap ...

People working hard trying to make it on his back and this reflected badly on all of us. OK, Secondly, I thought they were wrong. I thought actually it would all come to a bad ending and I've been ...

Press Sightings or PRI, just kept my head down and it's packed full of good ideas. The important thing about the book is not only that it's packed full of useful ideas for business managers, but also.

Really. Well, I'm thinking about their needs and I haven't got time to tell you the contents of the book. It's not expensive. And of course I recommend you you know, people listening by if they've ...

Said they want to spend their money with businesses who pay their tax, but the problem is they don't know who they are because the bad guys don't say hi, don't come and shop with us. We're awful. O...

So #1 recognition #2 is that if we can move the dialogue business behaviour in the country across thousands of businesses, I think our society will be better.

So anyway, I wrote the book. It sold really well. It sold sort of 50,000 copies without any publicity. And then Penguin came along and wanted to set it all around the world, which they do. Now, tho...

So in other words, I think cannibalism is is is based on greed and and has all these negative connotations and I think we should be. It's important that that responsible business people would want ...

So that was a very clever we survived that and we now we've survived the onslaught on the Internet, which is destroying many retailers. We've seen a lot of our biggest competitors go to the wall. I...

So what the public need badly is a signpost. OK, they badly need this. A signpost direct the public who don't know.

That gets them up in the morning. It's their own regard for their self-interest. So I get that we're doing it for entrepreneurs, business people do it to make money and that's that's finally provid...

That it's all about the people. And what I mean by that is we and you will observe 2 completely different outputs from people depending on how they treat them. And I'd like to say that about 10 tim...

The jeweller, that's substantially less than the price of prawn sandwich and it will last for a whole year. So we think that has got to be a no brainer for the benefit it will give you. I can give ...

The savings we have from shrinkage alone pay for the cost of the homes many times over. And when I bought the first home, the bank manager said he would lend me the 40 grand I wanted for a mortgage...

The Which Consumers Association members every year vote on the best retailer in the land and we've won that five years out the last 10 and the other five years we're pretty near the top anyway. So ...

Their customers, their staff, which was very well and I was sort of blown away by this. It doesn't sound complicated, but it was a real Eureka moment for me. And I took a a microscope and a knife t...

There are other schemes out there. I'll just finish off by saying a couple of things why we think ours is better, which of course you'd expect me to say. We applaud all schemes, of course, the firs...

They did a little press release. They had four really positive press articles. They couldn't believe the benefit they got from it. So it's not just about signing out, it is about spreading the word.

They still do a lot of the stuff work. He had to adapt some of the things we did because I give a birthday card signed by me to every colleague, colleagues, the name, week for our employees.

This is very much a numbers game. You know, we've got hundreds of members now. I want thousands. I'm greedy, I want 10s of thousands. And then the more the public are aware and of course we're gonn...

Those old enough for remember a company called Lasky's and we've survived the test of time. Now I accept that I've been lucky, I'm blessed and I've got a fantastic team around me, but I really thin...

To help drive those customers to your door.

To teach their, you know, staff to read and write so they can eventually be fit for work and for hospitals that cure people when they get sick. So we all, I think businesses have a debt society, an...

To these good businesses and that's how we come in with a good business charter. We set this scheme up from the beginning with the CBI and with the Tucs. They've been involved in its development ri...

To treating people well. The first one is that our recruiting and training bills are much reduced. That's an obvious one. The second one is that our people give much better service because they're ...

Together so well and we think we've got a tremendous product here. We think there are other schemes out there. I'll tell you why we think our scheme is so good. First of all, we think.

Varies. If you've got five employees, it's different to 50,000. In terms of the detail we go into and what we want you to sign up to, we think it's very important for the public to know that if the...

Very early on I saw the real benefits in treating both, particularly style but also customers well and I I kept my head down and carried on with that.

We've had bank foreclosures, we've had cash flow problems, we had an explosion which blew up our IT department and unfortunately our backup IT department's in the same building.

Worked really well at Asda as well with a completely different workforce, 70,000 mostly women sitting on on checkouts all day. Really tough job they did.

You know, capitalism is responsible for a lot of abuse and exploitation, horrendous through history and not with the present day. But but again, it's it's the the system that stood the test of time...

You know, lovey dovey stuff, You know, feel good hugging. This is real. It's it's doing the right thing. I sleep better at night. It is the right thing to do. But there's real benefits to the busin...