Ipsos boss takes aim at hybrid working culture

Between the loom­ing reces­sion, an oust­ed Prime Min­is­ter, a Con­ser­v­a­tive lead­er­ship con­test and the tail end of a pan­dem­ic, it’s been a busy peri­od for mar­ket research multi­na­tion­al Ipsos. But, for its UK CEO Kel­ly Beaver, there couldn’t have been a bet­ter time to start. 

“In some ways, it’s been a bril­liant year to take over the reins because it’s allowed me to do more than some CEOs do in 10 years,” says Beaver, who began the role in Novem­ber 2021. “From the eco­nom­ic and then also the polit­i­cal con­text, it’s been a real­ly inter­est­ing time.” 

Beaver is an econ­o­mist by trade. She thinks being data-lit­er­ate has helped in her new role. “Hav­ing a good under­stand­ing of data, evi­dence and how to weigh up dif­fer­ent sources does help me now as CEO,” she says.

In her first exter­nal review with her lead­er­ship team, Beaver was informed that her pace of work­ing was “relent­less”. How­ev­er, she has no plans to slow down. “You set the tone, you can­not be com­pla­cent,” Beaver says. “While we are one of the strongest research busi­ness­es in the coun­try, you only main­tain that by being con­stant­ly ahead; you can’t relax into the sta­tus quo.” 

Cultural problem

This quest for con­stant improve­ment extends to her atti­tude towards hybrid work­ing. Recent­ly, Beaver has felt the com­pa­ny cul­ture is “being erod­ed” due to a lack of time spent togeth­er in the office or in front of clients.

This has been a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem with Ipsos’ more recent join­ers. Beaver hosts lunch­es with the company’s grad­u­ates and was shocked to find that many haven’t pre­sent­ed to clients in their first 12 months and were still only com­ing in once a week, despite report­ing feel­ing lone­ly at work.

“That’s devel­op­ment that’s being stunt­ed as well as the cul­tur­al norms of the organ­i­sa­tion,” she says. “I’m very wor­ried about it and I am deter­mined to try some­thing new.”

This some­thing new will involve a shift from look­ing at hybrid from the employ­ee per­spec­tive, to tak­ing more of the busi­ness con­sid­er­a­tions into account. “There needs to be a bal­ance,” Beaver says. “It’s not all about the work­er hav­ing a work/life bal­ance.”

Pre­vi­ous­ly, peo­ple at the organ­i­sa­tion were asked to come in two days a week – one com­pul­so­ry day and one day of their choos­ing. But after analysing the fig­ures, she found that peo­ple were only com­ing in 1.4 days a week on aver­age. 

In a change of tack, Beaver will now ask staff to have “informed con­ver­sa­tions” with their line man­ag­er about the busi­ness require­ments and their indi­vid­ual needs to “find some­thing that works for both sides”.

While pre­vi­ous efforts to encour­age peo­ple back to its Thomas More Square head­quar­ters involved com­pa­ny socials and in-per­son train­ing, Beaver is “past incen­tivis­ing it now”, she says. “I will get them back a cou­ple of days a week, come hell or high water,” she adds.

Cost-of-living concerns

The oth­er press­ing con­cern for the Ipsos boss is infla­tion and its impact on her employ­ees. “The biggest thing on my mind at the minute is the cost of liv­ing and what I can do to help staff on low­er salaries get through what is a high infla­tion­ary peri­od,” Beaver says. “It looks like if we don’t take seri­ous mea­sures between now and next year, our staff will real­ly strug­gle.” 

Although she is reluc­tant to con­tribute to wage infla­tion, Beaver is explor­ing oth­er ways to assist Ipsos’ 2,000 UK-based employ­ees though the harsh eco­nom­ic cli­mate. The com­pa­ny already offers a range of finan­cial ben­e­fits for staff, includ­ing ben­e­fi­cial loans; these will be repack­aged to ensure every­one is aware of the sup­port that is avail­able.

In addi­tion, Beaver hopes to be able to offer all staff below asso­ciate direc­tor lev­el a vouch­er which can be used at a range of out­lets from Ama­zon to Tesco and Asda. She claims this “will allow them to spend that vouch­er on the neces­si­ties and to help off­set some of the costs of high­er ener­gy bills”, which are set to go up by 80% in Octo­ber. 

While the amount staff will be offered is yet to be con­firmed, Beaver is cur­rent­ly mod­el­ling three £100 vouch­ers over the win­ter months. “I have to bal­ance meet­ing our tar­gets and giv­ing to our staff,” she adds. “I’m hav­ing to trade this off and I’ll make a final call in the next cou­ple of weeks.” 

The impor­tance of pay is also rip­pling through to recruit­ment. While flex­i­bil­i­ty and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work from home were pri­or­i­ties for new recruits in the imme­di­ate post-pan­dem­ic envi­ron­ment, Beaver has noticed that pay has over­tak­en this as the main con­cern at inter­view stage.

“The work/life bal­ance side of things is being men­tioned too, but I’m not see­ing it as the dom­i­nant issue any­more,” Beaver says. “The biggest piece is about the price that you’re will­ing to pay for tal­ent, and that will only become more impor­tant. These work/life bal­ance con­cerns are nev­er going to go away, but it’s not going to be at the same extreme that we’re see­ing today.”

Progressive policies

Attri­tion rates were excep­tion­al­ly low dur­ing the height of the Covid pan­dem­ic but are now at a sim­i­lar lev­el to 2018/19. Look­ing beyond remu­ner­a­tion, Beaver believes that Ipsos’ work­place poli­cies have been key for attrac­tion and reten­tion. “As an employ­er, if you can sup­port your peo­ple through key life moments, that can pay div­i­dends in terms of tal­ent attrac­tion and reten­tion,” she says. “I have an ambi­tion for us to be the most sup­port­ive employ­er in the indus­try.” 

As part of this effort, Ipsos has intro­duced a range of pro­gres­sive work­place poli­cies, includ­ing shared parental leave and paid leave for preg­nan­cy loss, fer­til­i­ty treat­ment and issues relat­ed to the menopause. Access to paid leave in each of these sce­nar­ios is avail­able to all staff, regard­less of their length of ser­vice.

Enact­ing these poli­cies is a “nev­er-end­ing process”, accord­ing to Beaver but they are also some of her proud­est achieve­ments since assum­ing the CEO role. “As a female look­ing for­ward and see­ing that we’ve got things like menopause poli­cies in place is real­ly reas­sur­ing,” she adds. “It means you can cham­pi­on these poli­cies in a very authen­tic way.”

Beaver is the first female CEO of a major UK research agency. Although she doesn’t think much about the gen­der dif­fer­ence between her­self and her coun­ter­parts in the indus­try, she does claim a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty. “I know it makes a dif­fer­ence to the women com­ing up through the busi­ness and the wider indus­try,” Beaver adds. “The day I got this role, I was inun­dat­ed with lit­tle cards from women across the busi­ness con­grat­u­lat­ing me.”

One of Beaver’s pri­or­i­ties for the year ahead is to address the company’s gen­der and eth­nic­i­ty pay gaps. She has described some of the gaps she inher­it­ed as “hor­rif­ic”. Accord­ing to Ipsos’ most recent pay gap report­ing, the aver­age dif­fer­ence in pay between gen­ders was 16.6% in favour of male employ­ees. Despite hav­ing a more diverse work­force than the UK work­ing pop­u­la­tion at large (77% white and 23% eth­nic minor­i­ty), salaries tend to favour white employ­ees, with an eth­nic­i­ty pay gap of 18.2%.

“The last pay gap I had to stand in front of was not my pay gap,” Beaver adds. “This next one is mine, because the actions I take will start to feed through… I’d be fair­ly dis­ap­point­ed if it did­n’t improve.”

Although Ipsos has a range of diver­si­ty and inclu­sion groups, spon­sor­ship schemes and men­tor­ship pro­grammes, there is only one ele­ment that is going to make the biggest dif­fer­ence to the company’s pay gaps. “The things that make the dif­fer­ence are those piv­otal moments when you’re doing pay reviews, bonus­es and share allo­ca­tion,” Beaver says “That’s the thing that mat­ters and those are the times that you have to inter­vene.”

Look­ing to the future, Beaver’s pri­or­i­ty is “to make sure we have a sus­tain­able, prof­itable organ­i­sa­tion, where peo­ple want to come and work and which makes a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety”. The actions tak­en in her first 10 months have set the tone for what’s to come.