IPG Mediabrands reduces staff hours and pay as industry faces ‘triple crisis’ of health, social and economic factors
IPG Mediabrands – the holding group for agencies including Initiative, UM, Reprise and Ensemble – has implemented a ‘resilience’ strategy in a bid to get through the COVID-19 crisis.
Local CEO Mark Coad said in an email to staff, leaked to Mumbrella, that this will involve moving to nine-day fortnights, a hiring freeze, no pay rises and a pause on discretionary spending. There will also be a small number of redundancies.
IPG Mediabrands has seen a reduction in workload from clients
“This is a very small number, and they will be done respectfully, correctly and as quickly as possible to avoid stress,” Coad said in his note to staff seen by Mumbrella. “We simply cannot avoid that. The fact is – we do have reductions in client workload.”
If clients have paid for a 100% FTE resource, will they get a 10% refund in fees for the staff not working? I’m sure many clients will be asking
Gee someone’s clearly never worked at an agency. We work alot of unpaid hours going over and above for clients, pal, and these people will now be working more of them.
Surely this group of companies made a reasonable profit last year? Is there really nothing in the local kitty of a global agency to push on through this?
With these proposed changes are they looking to break even, minimise their loss or attempt a marginal profit to satisfy IPG HQ?
Are senior executives forgoing performance bonuses or other benefits? Are they taking larger salary cuts?
Always shit to see the losses socialised, when the profits are so rarely treated the same.