John Lewis Partnership

That is clearly a human problem, but it's also an economic one.

My guest today is Sir Charlie Mayfield, the former chairman of the John Lewis Partnership and the man asked by the government to lead its independent Keep Britain Working review.

His central argument is strikingly aligned with the premise of this podcast, which is handy.

We must stop treating ill health related economic inactivity simply as a problem to be managed once it has happened.

And my view is that it's almost invariably better that that happens rather than one just talking at the other and then the other talking past them.

Yeah.

So when you were leading a major employer, I said to you around this John Lewis partnership, did you always see workforce health as a strategic business issue? Or was it something that you've sort of come to understand more fully in doing the review?

I think in John Lowe's partnership, the constitution of the organisation is really all about its people.

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Buymeacoffee.com slash JLP talk or bond JLP cash app.

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Not only it is Thursday, right? It's the Women's Forum tonight, Thursday, the third Thursday of every month at 7 p.m.

It is also Bible Thumper Thursday.

Two years as House Speaker Mike Johnson, he closed the House early Wednesday, according to far-left extremists, off the deep end, liberal, commie, AP.

I call them commie, okay? Info may be false.

No endorsement implied, nor condemnation, okay? I don't represent Bond, JLP, or even myself, but not before drawing a scathing rebuke from Republican...

Yeah and it's an interesting question because I guess to because you mentioned about there about potentially maybe you create like a good school a big reason why actually families will move at least when they're buying housing is actually they'll start looking into good schooling areas so there's actually kind of a an area where you're actually marrying up potentially a purchasing decision that is actually very important in regards to housing in terms of what you're a lot of people will live in london work in london but then when they start to have family they'll want to move out to have more space and part of that reason if they are moving out specifically for that reason they're sacrificing some of those local amenities for that and one of those things is quality education and so you i can understand actually that approach that you're you're saying there because actually it ties in with why people would even move out from cities anyway um generally so it kind of makes sense to me i guess another component i was just thinking about is because i think i guess kind of backing off of that is obviously making it financially viable to do so and obviously in terms of the teachers that you mentioned there probably higher salaries getting all that kind of stuff that's a financial incentive on the kind of the individual on the worker but i guess part of this also is businesses right you know part of the reason why I don't know, it's not like a new town or anything, but the reason why Bracknell, for example, has had such a booming housing market and sort of growth in the last however many years is because so many companies have relocated around that area, whether it be Microsoft, Dell.

John Lewis Partnerships, 3M.

And that draws people in because people move for the jobs they want because they need money or they want to earn more money.

And that means they end up renting or buying in the local community.

And, there were several updates across department stores, marketplaces and specialists, starting with financial results.

John Lewis Partnership reported sales growth of 2% to £6.3bn in the 26 weeks to 1 August, while its loss before tax and exceptional items widened to £89m from £34m.

Waitrose sales rose 4% to £4.3bn, while John Lewis sales fell 2% to £2bn.

Meanwhile, Fraser's Group reported net debt of £1.3 billion for the year to 26 April, up from £941 million, reflecting capital expenditure, investments and acquisitions.

Meanwhile, Amazon is facing a proposed US class action lawsuit alleging discrimination against pregnant employees, including the denial of workplace adjustments and dismissal linked to time away from work.

Amazon has rejected the allegations, saying more than 99.9% of pregnancy-related accommodation requests were approved in the past year.

And finally for this week's updates, John Lewis Partnership plans to recruit more than 10,400 seasonal workers for Christmas.

This includes 6,000 roles across Waitrose, 2,600 at John Lewis and 1,800 across distribution and supply chain.

If you've been struggling to get work experience, this could be good news.

Some of the UK's biggest retailers, including Tesco, John Lewis, Waitrose, Costa Coffee and Currys, have launched a new scheme called Opening Shift.

The aim? To create thousands of work experience placements and eventually help create around 100,000 jobs for young people.

Even if retail isn't your dream career, don't overlook these opportunities.

all that going? It's on contract to go to the supermarket.

I don't think it's the John Lewis Group.

It might be...

It's certainly not Tesco's and it's not Morrison's because... hilariously, as Morrisons will support things.

In June, SMG launched RMX by Plan Apps, pitched as the UK's first retail media exchange, one buying and measurement layer across multiple networks.

In the same month, Dunhumbie announced its network alliance with Tesco, B&Q, John Lewis and Waitrose all in pilots over the summer.

So I was really interested to tune into the Retail Media Therapy podcast with hosts Viv Kraske and Colin Lewis, because they had on their show, Dean Harris, who runs Coops Media Network, which is itself delivered in partnership with Threefold, an SMG owned business.

And they talked about retail media aggregators specifically.