Cash is King

We had the blow of a member of staff giving their notice this week. Now I don’t want people to think we are shedding staff left right and centre or that he is leaving because he hated the work company or boss – perish the thought. He is leaving to start up his own magazine.

I’m starting to nurse the heretical view that maybe staff loyalty isn’t what its cracked up to be. OK, so I might be guilty of a slight trace of stable door shutting here. But maybe a little promiscuity isn’t such a bad thing.

For a start, to have an ambitious and dynamic company, you have to employ ambitious dynamic people. We have always had a policy of hiring people by attitude as much as by aptitude. It doesn’t matter how technically gifted you are in a subject, if you haven’t got drive, then you won’t go anywhere. We then try and build a culture of creativity and ideas and instil the entrepreneurial bug in people.

So I don’t suppose I should be too surprised when these ambitious, dynamic and entrepreneurially motivated people go and do something entrepreneurial and ambitious. I can’t very well turn round and try to talk them out of it. We just have to wish them god speed (albeit through gritted teeth) and console ourselves that we must make it look easy.

It’s also important to be philosophical and take the long view. When people leave we keep in touch and take an interest in their careers. Interestingly we have started to work again with some previous employees. Since working with us, they have gathered a range of new skills and new experiences. It brings a wider view to what we do that they wouldn’t necessarily have got working for us.

It also shakes things up in a company, which is not always a bad thing. No matter how much business people chant the mantra that change is good, scratch them deep enough and you’ll see they avoid it like the plague. With the best will in the world, when you have a hundred deadlines to face, the temptation is to stick people into a box and stop worrying about them.

Anyway, it isn’t as if we have a lot of choice in the matter. The only alternative is to hire people without any spark, who stick with you through simple inertia, and then nail their feet to the floor with restrictive employment contracts.

So anyone who knows of a bright and creative and slightly promiscuous graphic designer, you know who to call.