Not so long ago, most of Glasgow used to shut down for the last two weeks of July. It was known as the Glasgow Fair Fortnight, when factories and shipyards would close while families headed to the seaside. I remember my grandfather telling me to avoid visiting our Glasgow shops during this holiday period — it was better going to Blackpool, where the Glaswegians were spending their money.
It wasn’t until 1938 that the law changed so workers got one week’s paid holiday; before then, it was all unpaid. Today, fortunately, 28 days’ holiday is the minimum — an essential ingredient for a good quality of life.
A friend who runs a tech company in San Francisco told me that to help recruit the top coders, its standard employment offer now includes not just eye-watering money but complimentary Ubers to and from work, free food cooked by a high-class chef — and unlimited holidays. The company’s best coder also has an agreement that he can go home whenever it’s raining. I wonder how many days off the coders actually take when the time is unlimited.
It saddens me that, according to the Personnel Today website, UK employees take on average only 62 per cent of their holiday entitlement. People need a break for their physical and mental wellbeing, and I doubt whether anyone on their death bed reflects that they should have spent more time in the office.
John Spedan Lewis, son of the department store’s founder, was one of the first to recognise the importance of holidays and how to help employees have a break at the company’s expense. It may have been because his father refused to take any holidays at all that, in 1937, he opened the first colleague holiday camp in the grounds of his Leckford Estate in Hampshire. He wanted to share the beautiful location with those who worked so hard for him to be able to afford it in the first place. Today the partnership, despite recent financial problems, has five fantastic holiday locations across the UK, as well as a yacht for partners and their families.
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Over the past 15 years, inspired by both John Lewis and Richer Sounds, we at Timpson have built a fleet of 16 holiday homes across the UK. To me this is what enlightened capitalism is about, and while expensive, it can be the best money a business spends.
The average family spends two months’ salary on their holidays, so if my colleagues can enjoy time in a relaxing place, knowing the company is picking up the tab, it is only going to help us recruit and retain great people.
We got off to an inauspicious start. Without doing any research, I bought a 21-bedroom seaside hotel in Anglesey. Everyone in the company loved the idea of a free holiday, but sadly they didn’t want to spend it with their colleagues. They enjoyed working together, but going on holiday together was a step too far. Instead, they wanted a quiet lodge on a family-friendly holiday park.
Not knowing what to do with the hotel in Anglesey — and the 70 acres that came with it — we knocked it down and built a restaurant instead. The unintended result of my purchase was the creation of a successful venture, the Oyster Catcher restaurant, which now employs 80 local people. It was a lucky escape.
The lodges we find work best cost between £75,000 to £100,000, are next to the coast or national parks, and have great facilities such as indoor pools. Five homes are with Haven Holidays, the rest on similarly well run, well located parks.
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The purchase price is important because the more it costs, the more benefit-in-kind tax we need to pay. As long as colleagues pay to get there, and for their food and drink, the rest is on us, including a bottle of fizz left in the fridge.
It hasn’t always been smooth, but we now have a system in place to manage the bookings, welcome every colleague and cater for their specific needs. We have three lodges that accept dogs, we pay our cleaners well and on time, and we ask every colleague what we can do to improve the experience. To us, it’s important to provide families with their best holiday of the year.
Financially, the total cash cost to the company after buying the sites — made up mostly of benefit-in-kind payments, in effect a tax on looking after your colleagues — is about £300,000 a year. So that’s less than £20,000 per holiday home, and after the weekly shop bonus, it is considered the best benefit that the company offers. It’s impossible to prove that every penny we spend on holiday homes is wise, but the postcards and thank-you letters we receive (often written by children), and the smiles on the faces of colleagues who have just returned from a week’s break, are enough to know it’s money well spent.
Spedan Lewis was right. Those who help you to make money should get the holidays they deserve.
James Timpson is chief executive of Timpson Group
