Doing the right thing is a strategy, not a slogan.
We buy businesses whose only real asset is people. That makes how we treat them a commercial question, not a compliance exercise.
In a people business, the people are the asset. There is nothing to trade off.
Most responsible-ownership language exists in tension with returns — a cost accepted for reputational reasons. In the human capital economy that tension largely disappears, because the thing generating the revenue can resign.
A recruitment desk is its consultants and their relationships. A training provider is its trainers and its awarding-body standing. Strip either back too hard and the margin you were buying leaves with the people who made it. We have seen acquirers do exactly that, and it is why some of the businesses we look at are available cheaply in the first place.
So we invest where returns and impact reinforce each other — not because it reads well, but because in this sector the alternative does not work. That is the whole of our claim, and we would rather state it narrowly and mean it than state it broadly and be asked to prove it.
What we commit to, in writing, before completion
Specific and checkable. Every one of these is something a seller can hold us to, and something their team will notice if we break.
Your team hears it properly
Staff are told by someone they already know, in a planned way, before rumour reaches them. Where roles genuinely change, people are told directly and early rather than discovering it from an org chart.
Pay and progression get fixed, not squeezed
Under-market pay and absent career structure are two of the conditions that made the business cheap. We treat them as things to repair, because attrition costs more than the saving.
Client-facing capability is protected
Duplicated back office is cost and it moves to the platform. Consultants, trainers, assessors and account managers are the asset and they stay. We publish that line on our platform page and hold to it.
Compliance is not a cost centre
Right-to-work, safeguarding, DBS and awarding-body standards exist to protect real people — learners, candidates, temporary workers. We fund them centrally and we do not let them slip to make a period look better.
No margin we would not defend
We will not buy revenue that depends on practices we would be embarrassed to explain — opaque umbrella deductions, misclassified workers, learners enrolled on courses that will not help them.
Suppliers and terms honoured
Agreed payment terms are kept after completion. Stretching small suppliers to flatter group cash conversion is a transfer of risk to people less able to carry it, not an improvement.
Would we be proud of this in twenty years?
It is deliberately not a scorecard. Every acquisition, every restructure and every pricing decision gets put to one question that is hard to game — and if the answer needs a paragraph of explanation, it is a no.
We hold ourselves to the same standard we would ask of anything we own. That includes being straightforward when the answer is unwelcome: telling a seller quickly that we are not interested, telling a team what will change before it changes, and not renegotiating a price in the final week because we can.
What we deliberately do not claim
Responsible ownership is easy to assert and hard to evidence. Here is what we are not going to tell you, and why.
We are not claiming
- An impact score, ESG rating or measured social return — we have nothing to measure yet.
- B Corp certification or any equivalent accreditation.
- A carbon position. These are people businesses with small footprints; a net-zero pledge here would be decoration.
- That every acquisition will keep every role. Integration sometimes removes duplicated back-office jobs, and pretending otherwise is dishonest.
- A charitable or giving programme. If one starts, it will be described when it exists.
What you can hold us to instead
- The six commitments above, written into the deal documents rather than the website.
- References from owners of businesses we have bought, once there are any to give.
- How we behave during a process you can observe directly — speed, candour, whether the price holds.
- What your team says about the first hundred days, which is the only review that matters.
When there is a track record worth publishing, it will appear here with names attached and permission given. Until then this page describes intent, and is written so you can tell the difference.
If what happens to your team matters more than the last five per cent, say so.
Plenty of sellers care more about how their people are treated than about squeezing the final increment of price. That is a conversation we would rather have early than discover late.
- Commitments agreed in writing before completion
- A named integration plan you see in advance
- No approach to your staff or clients without permission
- An honest answer within days, either way