You didn’t invest because you wanted to take away employee’s earned value to yourself.

The fact that this ends up being the way that companies create more ‘shareholder value’ is a particular disease of modern neoliberalism. What you describe seems to me more similar to how companies in the US were run in the 1950s. More of a ‘rising tide lifts all ships’ approach that was used before management became antagonistic towards labor (viewing business units as ‘cost centers’ etc…). Its a particular framing that I think we can say does not guarantee any kind of result of profitability, but seems particularly enshrined in modern management culture.