Thumbs down for British workers

Jan 23 2006 by Brian Amble Print This Article

Penny Streeter, one of the UK's most successful businesswomen whose rags-to-riches story has been held up as an example to other entrepreneurs, has relocated her firm's headquarters to South Africa because, the Sunday Telegraph reports, " too many of her British staff were ill-disciplined, thieving and sometimes the worse for drink".

Streeter built her nursing recruitment agency - Ambition 24 Hours – into a £60 million-a-year business with her mother. But she told the Telegraph that lazy staff, rather than lower labour costs, were the main motivation for the move to Cape Town.

"People throwing sickies were a regular occurrence in the UK," Ms Streeter told the Sunday Telegraph: "The worst days were Mondays and Saturdays. If you are employing people who are young, in their teens or their twenties, the hangover experience is very common.

....Streeter said that another issue was that many of her staff were plundering details of the company's commercial database to sell to competitors or start up on their own.

Sunday Telegraph | 'Lazy, plundering and hung over ... entrepreneur's verdict on UK workers'