“Of course, it is great to be ranked high in the Turnover Ranking. Nothing human is alien to us. But, at the same time, I realise that turnover is vanity and profit is wisdom. A company is about profitability, but what is special about our industry is that it is all about people: they are our product and thereby our capital. Hence my statement: Profit is great, but don’t lose sight of people.

As far as I am concerned, business value is the sum of different values, for instance of the profit you make, your contribution to the society, the added value you offer to your customers and, finally, the value you offer to your employees. It is not just about the sum of these values, but primarily about the balance between them, as focusing only on profit leads to cold spreadsheet management, while focusing only on employees is social entrepreneurship. The latter is extraordinarily sympathetic, by the way. I have once read the motto of a social bakery in New York: 'We don't hire staff to bake brownies, we bake brownies to hire staff'. In my opinion, it's all about the balance.

Financial values are easier to identify than customer and employee values. You only have to check the figures. That is why OTTO Work Force has launched regular customer and employee satisfaction surveys already years ago. The surveys gave us a good picture of our performance: the financial figures on the one hand, and the figures on satisfaction with our services on the other. Until something felt a bit out of joint. Because what do you really know from the fact that 83.5 per cent are satisfied? You do not get to know people easily in quantitative studies; to get a better picture, qualitative research is important.