Staff also receive employee perks – worth £70m this year – ranging from holiday homes to sailing clubs, theatre outings, theme park admissions, and even a choir, all subsidised. Its directors, on the other hand, are paid substantially less than their boardroom counterparts at businesses such as Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury's. John Lewis staff earn the same as shopworkers at rival chains – but the year-end bonus is a significant top-up. 'What companies like John Lewis demonstrate is that this does not have to come at the expense of commercial success.' 'A successful economy is one where private interests ultimately serve the broader public interest,' he adds. Greenham says both privately held and employee owned businesses can contribute to an economy that does a better job of creating social and environmental value over the long run.

He said: 'The idea that workers have nothing useful to contribute to management belongs to the 19th century, not the 21st.' Tony Greenham, the head of finance and business at the New Economics Foundation says it is important that employees should 'have a greater say in how their businesses are run, not just a bigger share of the profits'. The power structure involves a staff council – for ideas and complaints to filter up to the board – and a weekly magazine where staff can air their views about policies and management, anonymously if they choose. As the company itself puts it: 'Partners share in the benefits and profits of a business that puts them first.' John Lewis's constitution also lists a formal mission to maximise the 'happiness' of its staff. His ideas are set out in the company's constitution which at its heart has the idea of establishing a 'better form of business'.Īll 76,500 of John Lewis's permanent staff are partners and they ultimately own the retailer's 35 department stores and 272 Waitrose supermarkets, which generate annual sales of more than £8bn. He signed away his ownership rights in 1929 to allow future generations of employees to take forward his 'experiment in industrial democracy'. John Lewis's ownership structure was established by pioneering businessman John Spedan Lewis whose father founded the business in 1864. Other examples include Blackwell bookshops, jam maker Wilkin & Sons and polymers manufacturer Scott Bader. It is not a one-off according to the Employee Ownership Association there more than 100 UK companies with significant employee ownership, a section of the economy that is worth more than £25bn annually. The retailer's employee-owned partnership model operates differently from private-equity backed businesses and stock market-listed companies as instead of profits flowing to the shareholders, at John Lewis they flow to the staff, in the form of the annual bonus.

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