Rachael Scarr-Hall: Many of our employees have been with the company for many years. With the affiliation to the company comes the knowledge how the business operates and what the culture as well as the attitude is like. This means that when an external hire comes in, they have a lot of people around them who can help them understand the GSH way. When we hire new employees, we look for people who strive to do their best and achieve better than what they’ve got. Somebody who feels they can run their own "business" but with the support of a bigger group.

Ian Scarr-Hall: We recently acquired a company, called Team Q, which is a UK based facilities maintenance provider delivering technical maintenance solutions. In the past, we had mixed results when acquiring external companies and most of them haven't worked out. If they worked out however, the reason was usually that the individual wants to stay with GSH. This was the case with Team Q; they wanted to join us and saw the benefit of doing so. They are now thriving and pushing us which is great.

Ian Scarr-Hall: All big "family" businesses that have survived until this day still have characteristics that can be traced back to the original family. Take the Rothschild family for example, whose family motto appears below their shield: Concordia, Integritas, Industria (Unity, Integrity, Industry). They strive to live up to those words in their business. Another example is IBM that to this day uses the slogan "Think" which was first used by Thomas J. Watson, one of its founders, in 1911. I think it's helpful to have a motto or even only a word to live by and guide you, not only as a business, but maybe also as an individual.

Rachael Scarr-Hall: I also think it's important to surround yourself with good and smart people. We have excellent colleagues across our business who support us with the day-to-day management of our business. Rothschild also does that; the family is involved of course, but they are not in charge of running the day-to-day business of the company. What also helps is to have a long and smooth transition from one generation to the next. This has been the case with us; the transition didn't happen overnight. At the same time, I have always been given the ability to feel that I'm doing my own thing, supported by an excellent team. To be given and to be nurtured is a great thing and I think it's a good formula to have the support of the other generation and to grow together. I have seen some of GSH's hard times. But we have come through them, so for me that's a reason to say that if there were more hard times to come, we can go through them. Experiencing tough times makes you feel stronger for the challenge of the future and that's a satisfying feeling.