Hangover amnesties for pampered PRs
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Your support makes all the difference.Got a hangover? Poor thing - look, don't bother coming in. What, it's your birthday? Take a week off. You're feeling a bit stiff? How about a massage?
Got a hangover? Poor thing - look, don't bother coming in. What, it's your birthday? Take a week off. You're feeling a bit stiff? How about a massage?
For most people these are the sorts of comments their bosses make to them only in their dreams. But things may be changing.
Public relations (PR) agencies are having to stroke their own staff as much as their clients to keep employees happy and motivated. As a result they might be setting a trend which workforces across the country will seize upon with glee.
One leading agency is granting "hangover amnesties" to staff who are honest enough to phone in and say they "have been on a bender" the night before. Another is giving all its workers a day off on the week in which their birthday falls. Yet another has arranged fortnightly massages to keep its staff supple.
A survey by the trade journal PR Week has found companies competing with ever more imaginative benefits to retain staff and try to prevent inter-agency poaching.
Giving shares to workers is increasingly common. At Consolidated Communications, for example, staff automatically become shareholders after six months' service and are kept informed of share prices and market predictions.
Other companies give employees bonuses - Shine Communications gives 20 per cent of net profits in quarterly performance payouts. Countrywide Porter Novelli gives merit awards of monthly compact disc tokens and bottles of champagne. Unpaid sabbaticals are also seen as a way of keeping staff fresh and satisfying their wanderlust. Consolidated Communications are offering three months unpaid leave after two years' service.
Even staff training is being approached in a more lateral manner. The Red Consultancy gives staff £600 a year to spend on 'fun courses'. Another agency, Ketchum, sends its account directors for an intensive training and appraisal course - in Florida. James Maxwell, United Kingdom chief executive at Ketchum, said:"We do have a business to run, but we will always look to accommodate life ambitions."
The Red Consultancy also gives staff hangover amnesties, so that, in the words of Red's joint founder David Fuller, instead of occasionally phoning in with "food poisoning", "people come clean and admit they went on a bender the night before. It is not carte blanche for partying every night of the week, but a way of encouraging straightforward dialogue within the agency."
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