“I don’t care where you work, just work,” John Purdy on working from home

Giving employees some leeway will pay off in the long run.

As Co-Founder of renowned IT company Ergo, John Purdy puts a lot of time into retaining his staff. While the business world can often be focused on how quickly something gets done, John is a believer in letting his staff live their lives. John was speaking to host Tadhg Enright on The Architects of Business, in partnership with EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™. As he said himself, he always makes an effort to keep his employees happy. "I spend one and a half, to two hours, every Wednesday morning with our People & Culture team and we focus on retaining our staff, attracting new staff," he said.

Working from home

His priority as CEO is to make sure his staff are happier to work with Ergo than another organisation. The secret for keeping a large number of employees happy to do their work is by allowing for a bit of flexibility, according to the 2014 EY Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist. Should that extend to working from home, he said that there is no reason not to allow it. "We’ve done a lot of work on that in recent months. And you know we have we’ve 430-odd people and we’ve 120 desks. So we don’t care where you work, just work," he said. Staying focused on reaching your company's targets doesn't have to mean you need to keep employees tied to their desk. As long as their work isn't being neglected, there every reason to give people the flexibility they need. "If you want to drop your kids to school in the morning and start at ten well then do that. Just make sure we have the outcomes. If you want to go and see your daughter or son in the play in school, make sure you do that because that’s important, and we’ll get that back in spades," he said. Subscribe to The Architects of Business for free on iTunes, SoundCloud or watch every episode on YouTube.