Culture matters: But do BRW and Best Places to Work understand the media industry?
By naming one of Australia’s biggest media agencies as Australia’s Best Place to Work in the under 100 staff category the award organisers have shown they are not being rigorous enough in their processes, says Mumbrella’s Nic Christensen.
Let’s be honest – how many people weren’t surprised that Australia’s fourth biggest media agency UM fell into the smallest category in the Best Places to Work awards?
Given the agency reported to RECMA it has $1.05bn in billings and 200 hundred staff just a couple of months ago there are clearly some questions to ask of UM and the awards organisers – and from the answers we got it’s clear the organisers have some soul searching to do.
In almost three years of covering media agencies for Mumbrella I have always enjoyed writing up the Best Places to Work award and survey.
We do it every year because it’s an important reflection of agency culture, and is something for the whole industry to celebrate. With a media agency churn rate above 30 per cent, culture awards are a barometer for staff choosing their next move. It’s part of the reason we have a category for them in the Mumbrella Awards.
This is not a case of sour grapes in the industry, as even before the official embargo had lifted this morning word had spread about UM’s win, with many in agencyland surprised to see one of the top media agencies, led by iconoclastic CEO Mat Baxter, put in the under 100 staff category.
“Since when is UM small?” one agency executive asked me today.
It seems particularly odd given most of the competitors UM finds itself up most regularly on pitch lists – MEC, Mindshare and OMD – are all on the over 100 staff list, and as we speak the agency is pitching for the $60m Optus/Virgin Mobile media business, which would take somewhere in the order of 20 plus staff to manage.
Baxter
When I asked Baxter what was going on he was adamant UM had only entered its Sydney office for the national award, and this was the reason it was in the under 100 staff category.
“Of our 97 Sydney staff about 80 responded to the BRW survey – the remaining 17 either did not respond, were on leave or ineligible to participate because they were on probation,” Baxter explained.
“As far as I’m aware entrants do not choose whether they enter the under 100 or over 100 category – this is a determination made by BRW based on your submitted worksheets and entry.”
Lovrencic
Confusingly organisers have disputed that it was only UM Sydney which was judged for the award – and indeed its entry in the magazine today does not stipulate that.
Great Places to Work managing director Zrinka Lovrencic told me: “I have had very detailed conversations with Mat about this and we have figures at 80 (staff surveyed).
“I have a breakdown by office for Universal McCann and employees who are employed by them and they cannot be shared services employees who work for the conglomerate [read staff employed by the larger Mediabrands parent company].
“We definitely checked that it is the whole company nationwide that gets surveyed…We are pretty sure we surveyed the whole company nationally.”
UM openly told Mumbrella it has 170 staff nationally – so clearly they didn’t.
So what is going on and why does it really matter?
First off let me say I don’t believe UM or Baxter have breached the rules of the Best Places to Work awards. Rather, those rules weren’t clear enough.
The problem is all of UM’s rivals were in the over 100 staff category had much larger staff samples in the survey. MEC had 131 staff complete the survey nationally, Mindshare’s 197, OMD 470, and media company Nova Entertainment 659.
While Best Places to Work insists it scores on a bell curve, and once you reach over a certain threshold of respondents it doesn’t really matter, I find it hard to believe the other agencies weren’t disadvantaged by the process.
What Best Places to Work seemingly fails to understand is UM pegs itself against these rivals, so allowing them to submit a much smaller sample isn’t comparing apples with apples.
Part of how UM has found itself in the smaller category comes down to the wider IPG Mediabrands model – with divisions like Cadreon, Ensemble and Mnet not being counted as UM staff in this process. Likewise contractors, finance staff and people on probation are also not counted.
While other media agencies don’t necessarily have this more segmented structure, it still boggles the mind that the media agency representing some of Australia’s biggest brands like Wesfarmers Group (which includes Coles, Kmart, Target and Bunnings), ING, NSW Government and William Hill only has 80 staff.
July’s RECMA numbers – submitted by the agency – put UM with one of the highest billing to staff ratios in the country of $5.3m per person, specifically due to that diversified services model. I can’t believe that this number is in reality $10.3m when you divide the 97 staff Best Places to Work think the media agency has by its billion-dollar plus in billings.
Back to the question of why does this matter? Well as many people like to point out we should celebrate the media industry. The wages aren’t the best, the hours can be pretty shitty, so agencies have to make an effort to be better places to work to attract top talent in a very competitive environment.
All the agencies on the list deserve recognition – be it GroupM’s MEC which made its debut on the list this year; OMD which has now made the list for seven years in a row; or UM which has consistently been a market leader and continued to redefine the genre through campaigns like its coloured Coke cans – and its position on the evolution of media.
Many of his rivals panned Mat Baxter for his declaration earlier this year to Mumbrella that UM was “not a media agency”. But in an industry where the silos – media, creative, PR, digital – no longer exist what he said was both courageous and thought provoking. I also don’t think it was lost on senior marketers that, once again, UM got the whole industry talking about them.
The sad thing here is the BRW and Great Place to Work have now put UM in a situation where they are being made to account for why and how they won.
It’s not at all comforting to have BRW editor Michael Bailey tell us: “BRW is the publication partner of this list, not the actual producer of it – and with two day-to-day staff we don’t have the resources to verify all of the data we are provided.”
Fairfax’s 2013 redundancies on the once proud business magazine have clearly had an impact.
Likeswise Lovrencic kept insisting that Baxter was incorrect in what he had entered, and when asked about the discrepancy with the RECMA staff numbers and whether she could be sure Best Places to Work had polled all the relevant staff she said: “(The 200 in RECMA) are not UM’s staff they work for the parent company. They are not Universal McCann staff.
“We definitely checked that it is the whole company nationwide that gets surveyed. We check that via the VPN of the email addresses.
“We are pretty sure we surveyed the whole company nationally.”
When you charge an eye watering $2,195 per company to enter your awards, I don’t think being “pretty sure” you got everyone is anywhere near good enough.
Nic Christensen is the deputy editor of Mumbrella
Update 2.30pm: BRW editor Michael Bailey has asked that it be noted the magazine does have more than two staff.
“Yes there are 2 fulltime editorial staff (myself and Caitlin Fitzsimmons) but in terms of shared resources we also have our Rich List Editor John Stensholt (and the half-dozen casual researchers supporting him on each list), senior workplace writer Fiona Smith, and a revolving cast of six or so Business Media Group trainee graduates,” said Bailey.
These BRW lists have always been a joke and they are clearly mostly false. For example “EWeb Marketing” always use to win best search agency and best place to work for many years. Tho in reality they paid all the staff next to nothing to work their as “contractors”. It is easy to tell your staff all to fill in a survey and give top marks as well.
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The media industry suffers from high employee turnover. You have a great opportunity to share what some of the companies in the industry are doing to engage their employees and reap the benefits. Why have you chosen to go on a witch hunt to find something negative?
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Good read. It’s all a bit confusing and makes the awards seem like a crock.
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“We check that via the VPN of the email addresses.”
Does she mean IP address…?
Because I am pretty sure VPN is a virtual private network….
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So is UM a media agency with less than 100 employees or is it a connections agency with more than 100 employees?
The mind boggles. Now back to more important issues like scratching my arse.
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The funny part is that if you put UM into LinkedIn there are clearly far more than 100 current employees … Not the most scientific source.. But a good indicator to ask the question…
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To make some assumptions:
– I believe Zrinka Lovrencic means ‘IP addresses’ where ‘VPN’ has been said.
– It’s possible that someone based in the Sydney office could be completing the online questions when not actually in the Sydney office, giving the illusion of a wider geographical spread. Or even using a VPN to log in through company systems.
– I don’t know enough about the actual questions asked, but it can be easier for smaller sample sizes to return results much higher / lower than larger samples, since larger samples tend to regress results to the mean (and are more reliable as well).
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I work at a boutique agency with very low staff turnover (well below the industry benchmark). If we considered the $2,195 entry fee a useful investment in our agency brand, I am sure we’d give UM a run for it’s considerable pile of money. As it is, I’d rather put the $2,195 towards rewarding my team in small but tangible ways that matter to them as individuals.
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I thought UM wasn’t a media agency anymore?
Or maybe they have 97 people who work in the media agency part and exclude the ‘other people’ who are PR/Connections/Creative/Activation people?
Or does that mean they have even LESS people who work in the media agency part and can technically enter the “Start Up”/”Emerging” category next year?
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I’m confused. According to the link below, just last year UM won “Network of the Year” which surely would suggest that it employs people in more than one State? Also on the link, rather interestingly UM Sydney won Employer of the Year (for employers OVER 100 employees).
https://www.umww.com/news/2014/11/um-australia-repeats-as-media-network-of-the-year
#rortingthesystem
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Good to see the organiser of this rigorous survey taking the time to craft a nuanced response:
“Why have you chosen to go on a witch hunt to find something negative?”
Doing some basic fact checks counts as a witch hunt now?
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UM entering sydney only is the ultimate F U to their melbourne office. Assume this vanity project will change in the future.
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LinkedIn says 201 – 500 employees
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Well done Nic for calling out Great Places to Work, they need to be more accountable on the criteria. The MD needs to address properly and disqualify UM for the cheating. UM tell RECMA 200 people you cant have it both ways.
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No one is doubting UM isnt deserving of an award for its culture (the fact it keeps attracting serious industry talent is a good sign), but Zrinka/GPTW should just admit they got this wrong.. by no means in UM less than 100 people Nationally. They didnt check Linked in, they didnt get check RECMA, they didnt get a signed sworn statement form UM HR on employee staff numbers, nothing.
Either they do an easy fix to change the award to “UM Sydney”, which would be appropriate if that’s all who responded. Or they admit the error, but say they will not change it now and will ensure better processes are in place for next year.
To try and defend what is on obvious mistake – does not serve GPTW or Zrinka well
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I have to take this article with a massive pinch of salt when there is a conflict of interest between mumbrella as an events and awards organiser using its editorial arm to dish dirt on a competitor in the same space.
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Hi Sour Grapes,
We don’t run a similar program to Best Place To Work, and I wouldn’t consider them a competitor.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
@Sour Grapes – there isn’t ‘dirt’ here being fabricated.
Have you read the article – its a very valid point being made.. UM is NOT under 100 people, but Zrinka is still maintaining that it is and she is “pretty sure”
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Well done UM; a fairly won & well deserved achievement. It’s a shame that this has now been tainted & overshadowed by the incorrect, negative nit-picking of some. Enjoy your new accolade.
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@mumbrella @The Truth
Then please explain this from paragraph 5:
“culture awards are a barometer for staff choosing their next move. It’s part of the reason we have a category for them in the Mumbrella Awards.’
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@Sour grapes. Please explain how UM is under 100 people.
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@The Truth
I didn’t write the article, numbnuts, it’s not for me to ‘explain’ anything. I am asking a legitimate question that @mumbrella has sidestepped.
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