Creating a Valuable Business

5. People

5.1 Make your firm an attractive place to work.

• Provide good working conditions.
• Offer competitive remuneration.

5.2 Strengthen your personnel resources through recruitment and training. For example:

• Experienced directors who make creating value a priority.
• Managers with transferable skills to manage growth.
• Employees who help you achieve market-leading standards.

5.3 Make sure employees want to increase the value of the business.

• Communicate your strategy and get employees to buy in to it.
• Use incentive pay to align remuneration with creating value.

5.4 Set up systems to minimise the risk of employees 'owning' value.

• For example, sales people may own customer relationships, expert employees may own important company skills and managers may own their entire team.
• You may want to include clauses in your employment contracts to prevent former staff from competing with you.
• Systems that make sure knowledge is shared, encourage teamwork, and make employees easy to replace are vital.

5.5 Retain key employees.

• The individuals who have created a valuable business will themselves be an important part of that value.
• Provide opportunities for career progression within the company.
• Allow them an appropriate share of the value they create.