Culture Club #4

Today we’re returning to our series on culture and looking at how work/life balance isn’t just a nice to have HR policy but essential recruiting tool. But first…

Today’s highlights:

💚 The Northern Game Changers list is now live. Celebrating 50 outstanding individuals and organisations driving real change across the North, in sustainability, social justice, innovation, creativity, and beyond.

🏃‍♂️ Some great stats from the University of Sheffield continuing to cultivate entrepreneurial talent in their students.

🚀 New £1m regional tech booster announced by UK Tech Cluster Group!

Five minutes.

That’s how long it feels since my daughter started school, and how long it took to change my entire career.

Now, she’s about to leave primary school and make the leap into high school. The start of the long, inevitable road to independence.

It’s got me feeling nostalgic.

Because I still remember that first week of Reception vividly. We’d been used to nursery hours: drop-off at 8am, pick-up at 6pm. Work first, life squeezed in around the edges.

So I tried the same routine when she started school. Until the day I turned up to find her hiding in the Wendy house, crying her eyes out from exhaustion.

That was it. No job was worth that look on her face.

So I changed everything.

First, I reshaped my working hours. But eventually, I left corporate life altogether to join a tech startup where flexibility wasn’t a perk, it was the culture.

But it wasn’t just flexibility I was chasing. I wanted to be part of something intentional. At Mina Digital Ltd, I found that. We were building a business where values weren’t just laminated posters on a wall, they shaped how we worked every day.

I resonated deeply with the clarity of purpose that often gets talked about as the preserve of Gen Z but, in truth, matters to all of us.

The older I get, the more convinced I am: work is too big a part of life to settle for it being just a pay slip at the end of the month. It should feel positive and meaningful, a place you want to be, not just have to be.

The Talent Trap

Businesses talk endlessly about “attracting the best talent.” But the best talent has options.

They’re choosing where they work not just for the salary, but for a life that makes sense.

• Parents want to be there for the school play, and still build brilliant careers.

• Women are demanding workplaces designed for them, not designed around the assumption of a man with a full-time wife at home. Investing in Women has plenty of data on this shift.

• Gen Z and Millennials increasingly see work as one part of a meaningful life, not the whole story. A recent Deloitte Global 2024 Gen Z and Millennial Survey found nearly half would leave employers that compromise their wellbeing, flexibility, or values.

• In a McKinsey report, 83% of employees in the survey cited productivity as a primary benefit of working remotely.

The old command-and-control approach is leaking talent faster than a punctured tyre. People are willing to work incredibly hard, but not at the cost of missing their child’s bedtime stories, burning out, or feeling disposable.

If you want exceptional people, build the business that exceptional people want to work for.

Work-life balance isn’t a soft HR policy, it’s a competitive advantage. It’s the reason people stay loyal, innovate, and go the extra mile.

It’s also the reason someone might walk away, even from a big salary, and join the startup next door instead.

Build it from day one. It pays dividends, in loyalty, in performance, and in the moments that matter most.

Here is Trove’s Chris Dalrymple discussing in our upcoming podcast episode how culture often the last thing founders think of, but it should be the first.

See you same time next week.

Carl.