To recognise that, and to stave off the predicted ‘Great Resignation’ we decided to put our money where our mouth is and develop a new employee value proposition for ourselves. The premise of our EVP was to reward the loyalty and hard work of our existing staff, attract new talent into the agency and support our positioning as a progressive and outstanding place to work in the creative industry.
The Friends Pact was born and launched in June 2021. Using the Great People Index as our EVP model, we developed a range of benefits and initiatives across four pillars of employee delight: Pay, Play, Performance and Purpose.
Each pillar had impressive offers and incentives that were either financial, wellbeing, developmental or societally oriented in their form. Edition one had a whopping 29 benefits, over and above basic pay and annual leave entitlement.
Knowing that we wouldn’t get our EVP right first time, we committed to a Now/Next/Future roll out, with plans to release annual iterations. We’ve recently launched edition two, adding nine fantastic new benefits and de-listing three poorly accessed offers. The new benefits include summer hours, where the team get to finish at 1pm on a Friday for the duration of the warmer months; a health cash plan, which subsidises access to additional health services including counselling, and the coveted £2500 bucket list lucky dip prize. You can see the full list here.
We’re already thinking about edition three for 2023, but what is clear is that The Friends Pact has been hugely beneficial for Mr B & Friends. Sentiment towards the agency is off the charts, performance is at its highest levels in our history, and it has marked us out as one of the industry’s most progressive employers.
We’ve had an incredible response from our people, our clients and our friends in the industry. Employee experience has never been more important and after all, people are at the heart of what we’re about.
Ever since I joined the brand industry in the ‘90s, I was always fascinated by the intelligence, diversity, opinions, insights, weirdness, and sheer creativity of the people I worked with. I’ve always believed in people.
Power up your people and you’ll see it’s literally amazing what can happen.
