AMV BBDO’s New Benefit Scheme: People’s Needs Are Not One Dimensional
It’s no secret that the pandemic changed the way employers think about their employees worldwide. A whole new workforce came to life when the world embraced working from home and saw the undoubted benefits it brought, both for the personal lives of employees, as well as for sustainability practices and from a financial standpoint. While we now grapple with the new normal, different industries and countries take different approaches to the working from home and working from the office divide, but one thing is for sure - companies have had to think long and hard about their best practices when it comes to the work-life balance.
Within the advertising world the conversations about the talent crunch, young creatives being prevented from finding jobs, women leaving the industry due to lack of consideration for their personal lives, parenthood issues, and overworking, all run parallel with each other. As the UK trials its four-day working week on its biggest scale so far, we enter an era of workers trying to communicate what they really need in life from their employer and some employers seem to start getting the picture.
Enter AMV BBDO and its launch of the ground-breaking new company-wide benefit scheme that is created specifically to help staff through different times in their lives, dubbed the ‘Life Changes’ programme. The initiative is part of a new employee value proposition that looks to help people through individual and personal challenges in their lives outside of work, aiming to retain them in the company by allowing them to expand beyond it (for example through being encouraged and subsidised to pursue their own side hustles).
The innovative benefits of the programme include, but are not limited to, financial support towards egg freezing and fertility treatments, subsidy for transgender staff for their transition costs, paid-for relationship break up and divorce counselling, paid ‘pawternity leave’ for those with new fur babies, as well as a £500 a month per child for childcare for one year provided by the company.
‘Life Changes’ spans four key areas of life - freedom, nurture, transformation and safety. According to Kelly Knight, chief diversity officer and HR director at the agency, she identified those key areas through her extensive 27-year-long experience with employees, as well as her own experience in life. To Kelly, looking at one’s life holistically and not just through the prism of commonly discussed subjects was crucial in creating the program, and to other leaders in the industry she pleads - “Try and walk in somebody else’s shoes.” Her and AMV’s hopes are that the industry will take on more programmes similar to ‘Life Changes’ especially after the data emerges, which she is sure, will provide the results the company hopes for.
LBB’s Zoe Antonov spoke to Kelly about the UK’s first in the sector, what went into the decisions taken for the four key areas of life and what cultural shifts she expects to see in AMV BBDO after the launch.
LBB> How did the idea for the Life Changes programme come and how long did it take for it to get to its final version?
Kelly> I’ve worked at AMV for 16 and a half years, and a third of our workforce has over 10 years of service. This means that I’ve had a good period of time during which I’ve seen many people go through various changes in their lives. We started to really think about Life Changes during the pandemic. It was at this time that my team and I realised that we weren’t just HR practitioners, we became life coaches. From helping individuals with housemate conflicts, to discussing childcare issues or the impact of trying to conceive and seeing lots of new furry friends pop up on screen, to drawing upon my own experience of going through a tough divorce whilst stuck in the house with an estranged spouse.
All of these experiences made us really think about whether our current benefits were really offering people the support they needed and helping them bring the best version of themselves to work. We all try to be strong, but during that period of time, feelings intensified, and there was a sense of despair, especially for those who had just entered the workforce with the prospect of no job. It got us thinking about the long, medium, and short-term effects.
This year, I was fortunate enough to spend a good period of time working from abroad and it allowed me the headspace to not only think about the structure of the programme, but to research and find partners with the right cultural fit to help deliver it. It also gave me the real life opportunity to see the personal and work benefits of having the freedom to work remotely from different countries.
LBB> What was the process behind you defining the key areas of Freedom, Nurture, Transform and Safety and how did you narrow it down to these four?
Kelly> I started with a list of all the things that I’d helped staff with over the last 27 years, and a theme emerged from there. But it was teaming up with Margaux Revol, one of our amazing strategy partners, that helped to group the offering into the four key areas.
LBB> What kind of conversations within the company took place between the C-suite and employees, to find out that these are the key areas that employees need help and support from their employer?
Kelly> We created the programme and then spoke to a cross section of employees going through different life stages and changes to see whether they felt the programme offered something for everyone. The feedback was a unanimous ‘Yes!’. The staff loved it!
LBB> Was there any research that helped you reach the final version of the Life Changes programme, and helped you choose its main points?
Kelly> The only research was going through the school of life. In my 46 years, I’ve been through so many of life’s difficult and happier times, from marriage to divorce, difficulty conceiving to filling the void of having no children and supporting those coming out and dealing with the impact of intersectionality, so that was the starting point. But as I mentioned before, the role of HR has evolved. It’s now so much more about your people and their personal needs, especially since the pandemic. It just made sense to think about the problems of the collective and create a programme that really addressed those needs.
LBB> Many companies, in and out of the industry, do not provide adequate leave for new parents - you even provide 'pawternity leave’, which is an incredible consideration for even the smallest detail. What would you say of those who are against that kind of move?
Kelly> I would say, try and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. For many people, their pets are their family, especially so for those that don’t have children. Think about those that live alone and the support that having a pet gives them, as they navigate being by themselves. When you think about people’s needs, you can’t be one dimensional. As people get older, children leave the nest and that in itself brings a whole host of emotions, needs and in some cases increases in freedom. So having a dynamic programme like Life Changes helps to support all our staff no matter what experience they are going through in life.
LBB> Through the programme you also encourage your employees' side hustles by pushing them to set up their own businesses - why was this an important part?
Kelly> We think all employers, especially those in the creative sector, should embrace our staff’s craving for different experiences. Over the years, we noticed an increase in people resigning to do completely different things or to start their own businesses. And when we started speaking to staff and asking them what we could do to keep them and allow them to pursue their other interests, most were able to come up with a way of making it work. It made sense to formalise this practice as we’ve been able to keep some great minds by giving them the flexibility to pursue their side hustles.
LBB> Do you anticipate any changes in the culture of the company, with the establishment of the programme?
Kelly> I don’t think the culture will change; I think it will get stronger. Many of us haven’t felt that the agency was a place of work, it’s been a supportive structure full of adopted family and friends. The pandemic split us, and we may not be physically together all the time, but normalising taboo subjects and problems in life, sharing our freedom and nurturing experiences will bring us together and make us stronger.
LBB> Do you plan to extend the programme beyond your London offices and if so, when?
Kelly> It’s early days but we’ve started to talk to some of the other BBDO agencies to give some insight into the practicalities of operating a similar programme overseas.
LBB> What do you think the industry can learn from what you are doing in your own space? And do you see it moving towards more programmes like the Life Changes one?
Kelly> I think we can all learn a lot from Life Changes and in time we will see the data that supports our thinking on retention and cultural connectedness.
LBB> Any final thoughts?
Kelly> To all senior leaders, I hope you can see that it’s programmes like this that will add value to your organisations, and a happier supported workforce will increase business success.
At AMV, we’re grateful to have a modern senior leadership team that shares the same values of empathy and kindness and a vision for the future of the agency that includes fostering an environment where the business of creativity can thrive.
