Businesses that embrace generosity—through financial contributions, employee volunteering, or resource sharing—can reap several benefits that enhance their operational success and societal impact.
We don’t wake up every morning looking forward to breathing, calculating how many breaths we are going to take before lunch. We go about our daily activities without a moment’s thought about our breathing. However, if our breathing stopped it would very quickly curtail our activities!
In the same way, profits are essential for a business to exist and continue, and without them over a period we would quickly cease to exist. But I put it to you that if we create a business that acts for the benefit of others, and put our focus on maximising that benefit, then the profits will surely follow. The beneficiaries would include our workers, our customers, our suppliers, our local communities and the world community.
A mindset shift
This is a completely different way of thinking and requires a mindset shift from scarcity to abundance. Most businesses, even those aiming to be a good business with purpose, operate from a position of scarcity. Many sincerely want to create a good place to work for our workers but work on the basis that they will see what they have left at the end of the year before giving to their employees in different ways, such as better working conditions, more holidays, increased flexibility etc. I see this as an upside-down way of operating and not the way of abundance.
When asked in interviews what my main business mistakes have been, one of my answers is, “not employing better people earlier in the business’s history.” Better people may cost more, but their larger salary is almost always repaid many times over in extra revenue and profit. We just need to take the plunge and recruit them in the first place, something that I previously held back from doing.
It is the same with being extravagantly generous to our workers in terms of pay, and terms and conditions. Here’s a few examples. We give two weeks extra holiday to people in their 8th year with us, this is on top of an already generous holiday allowance. We always share profits with workers each year, which is usually around 15% of the total. We have a Care Fund which we contribute into every month, which covers workers when they need extra time off due to bereavement or long-term illness. In 2022 this fund had built up to more than we needed so we distributed half of it to the lower paid workers to help cover their energy bills which had risen astronomically that year.
We will receive back in spades; it’s simply a case of changing our mentality from one of scarcity to abundance and intuitively knowing that this is the way to go, and the gift of generosity will come back to us. I can’t think of a religion in the world that doesn’t have within its holy writings something along the lines of this principle. “Give and it will be given back to you”, “reap what you sow”, “what goes around comes around” or “karma”. Surely, they can’t all be wrong.
Yes, people may occasionally take advantage of our generosity, but this doesn’t mean the principle is wrong; it just means that the circle of generosity is broken temporarily (and probably that we have recruited the wrong people into the business).
Looking out for local communities
Many businesses invest in their local communities mainly from a marketing perspective, thinking that they will benefit in the future in various ways. This may well be true, but if that is our only motivation, this is not really the abundance mindset, and the chances are that at some point, it will fall over because others will rumble us.
Far better to act generously towards the community and others without any future benefits purely for the enjoyment of doing good. What a privilege it is to be able to benefit others through our businesses. Yet so many don’t see the joy of doing that. I’ve met many good businesspeople who talk about ‘giving something back’ after they sell their business or on retirement. It feels like some kind of obligation that they owe society (which is never a great motivation) – surely it is far better to not have ‘taken something’ in the first place. The implication behind this is that we will suffer as a person or a business if we act generously in the present, when the very opposite is true.
I am so proud of our employees who managed to do 910 hours volunteering in 2023-24 which was 70% up on the previous year. We don’t view this as lost productivity, but an act of giving to the local community by the workers who are volunteering and by the gift of time from the company. It’s good to give! Another example is donations. We donated over 25% of our profits last year; this for me is more fulfilling than an extra zero on the balance sheet.
Human beings are a community-orientated mammal, our psychology and humanity are more fulfilled and happier when we are giving to and serving others. So why wait? Let’s start today. As Churchill said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
About the Author
Paul Hargreaves is a speaker, author, and CEO of Cotswold Fayre, a leading UK speciality food wholesaler, and B Corp. An advocate for business as a force for good, he champions compassionate leadership and sustainability, themes explored in his books Force for Good and The Fourth Bottom Line.
