Companies claim people are their most important assets – but is it true?

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Premier Inn: Owner Whitbread links 10 per cent of its CEO’s bonus to employee-related metrics 

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ig businesses love to make a song and dance about their people being their most “important asset”.

You’ll see variations on that theme in almost every CEO’s quotes at results time; in chairpeople’s annual report statements; dotted around corporate websites: “Come work for us! We love our people!”

An investigation by the High Pay Centre and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the results of which will be presented today, pours a keg full of ice cold water over that claim. The figures they have unearthed suggest that it is about as reliable as one of Donald’s Trump’s recent tweets on the subject of who won the US presidential election.