An eye for retail

Laura Whyte surely has one of the nicest jobs in HR. As personnel director of John Lewis department stores, she is working for a company that holds operating for the benefit of staff as one of its founding principles. The John Lewis Partnership, a group that combines the department stores, Waitrose supermarkets and a number of smaller businesses, is 100 per cent owned by its employees (who are known as partners) and is therefore spared the short-term share price chasing, or job-slashing, of some of its rivals. It’s a company where every partner – from a part-time sales assistant to the chairman Charlie Mayfield – gets the same annual bonus (13 per cent of salary for 2008) from profits. A company voted Britain’s best retailer for six of the past 10 years, with the status of a national institution – a national treasure, even. And, as if all that weren’t enough, Whyte can pretend that shopping is really work.