Working at Aegis

Our organisation exists thanks to the skills and creative talents of almost 14,000 people. That is what keeps us in business in both Aegis Media and Synovate. Looking after each of them properly is a major priority, and fundamental to our success. Our objective is to provide them with satisfying professional opportunities, in a safe and stimulating environment, and to help them develop the skills to advance and grow within our organisation.

We have continued to make significant investment in training across the group. In 2006 we ran a number of bespoke groupwide leadership programmes. One, developed with Ashridge Management College, concentrates on strategic and business issues, with a second on developing leadership skills and behaviours for our business leaders.

The Synovate Academy continued to sponsor training programmes across all of the global network’s offices in 2006, ranging from practice accreditation and solutions to sales and business development.

At Aegis Media, we put some 5,000 employees - both client facing and support - through Carat’s 3C’s training programme. Standing for Curiosity, Collaboration and Creativity, the 3C’s programme supports the development of the Carat offer, with its increasing focus on communications planning, internationally. The programme was launched worldwide with T-Day, to mark its impact on transforming communications, and has been followed up with an intensive programme of global and market-specific communication.

In 2006, we continued our programme to introduce more structured career development in some of Aegis Media’s larger markets. In the UK, where we are a member of Investors in People, Carat was featured in The Sunday Times ‘100 best companies to work for’ for a sixth successive year. In Aegis Media Nordics our Young Lions programme to develop high-potential employees was extended into a broader regional initiative called Global Village.

Synovate has run an annual employee engagement survey each year from 2002 to 2005. In 2006 we took a decision to move the survey to March 2007, allowing us to present findings almost immediately at our annual Synovate conference the following month, and to use a newly developed survey methodology.

The survey looks at commitment, satisfaction and other employee issues across all Synovate’s full-time staff (almost 6,000 today), so we can understand what we do well and what we can improve to help staff commitment. Evaluation of certain senior managers’ performance is directly linked to the survey’s results and each of Synovate’s operating units has developed an action plan to take advantage of the strengths and address areas for improvement identified by the survey.

Groupwide, we have a formal appraisal system in place, and commit to reviewing each employee’s progress at least once a year. We also use a range of internal communications for skills development, to share best practice and to give our people the recognition they deserve. We have a regular groupwide online publication, covering developments in our businesses and markets, and provide regular updates on our business progress, both written, in person and using online video. Each of Aegis Media and Synovate has a global Aegis awards programme, aimed at recognising the best work in our business, and sharing insight and practice development globally, as well as regional awards around the world. We encourage frequent and candid communication at a business, country and group level.

In 2006 we were joined by a new group HR director, with considerable experience of leading the people agenda in international organisations. The emphasis of our people policies is on talent development, diversity, reward and recognition, aligned to the changing needs and strategies of our businesses, and we have been investing in resource in these areas.

As part of this, we are in the middle of a global initiative to improve the efficiency and access to employee information around the group. In 2006, as part of this initiative, we started the process of engagement with key stakeholders, inside and outside our business, to understand their needs and wishes. We carried out an audit of existing tools for employee information data collection and analytics in order to define requirements for system improvements. We are currently designing the solution for testing and subsequent roll-out from the second half of 2007 onwards, allowing us to fully test measure our people performance.

In the year we carried out some 40 business continuity planning exercises, designed to protect our people and ensure the viability of our services to clients in the event of a major incident.

We are committed to fair employment practices, including the prohibition of all forms of illegal discrimination. We believe in giving equal access and fair treatment to all employees on the basis of merit; we think this is both good business sense and ethically sound. We are committed to following the applicable labour and employment laws wherever we operate.

We believe that disabled people have the same rights as non-disabled to become and continue as our employees. Wherever possible we provide the same opportunities for disabled people as for others. If employees become disabled we make every effort to keep them in our employment, with appropriate training where necessary.