Why we benchmarked our employee benefits against the PR industry
Public Relations is an industry built on ideas and thinking. But ideas emerge from environments where talented people can sustain demanding work over long periods.
At PR Agency One, we recently undertook a comprehensive review of our employee benefits. The exercise was a deliberate effort to benchmark ourselves against the wider PR and communications industry and ensure that our policies genuinely support the people delivering our work.
The conclusion was simple: high performance agencies like ours must design their internal structures with the same discipline they apply to client strategy.
The changing expectations of agency talent
The expectations of communications professionals have evolved rapidly in recent years.
Competitive salaries remain essential, but they are no longer the only factor determining where talented people choose to work. Increasingly, professionals assess a role through a broader lens: flexibility, healthcare access, development opportunities and long-term career sustainability.
For agencies, this shift presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Agencies that fail to adapt risk losing experienced practitioners to competitors or to in-house roles. Those that respond thoughtfully can build teams that stay longer and perform better.
We think that we’ve always had good benefits, but it was time to revisit our offering.
Benchmarking our benefits was therefore about understanding where the market has moved, and where we needed to move with it.
Looking beyond superficial perks
Many agency benefit packages rely heavily on surface level perks: office snacks, social events or occasional team trips. While these contribute to culture, they rarely address the deeper factors that determine whether a career is sustainable.
Our benchmarking process focused on areas that materially affect employees’ lives:
- Access to healthcare and mental health support
- Flexible working structures
- Transparent reward systems
- Career development investment
- Long-term support for family life and tenure
In other words, we focused on structural benefits rather than symbolic ones.
Designing benefits for performance
The review was guided by the same philosophy that shapes our client work: Creative Effectiveness.
Creative effectiveness in communications means ideas must ultimately deliver measurable outcomes. Applied internally, the principle is similar. Benefits should support the behaviours and conditions that allow people to do their best work.
That thinking influenced several decisions, including company-funded private healthcare, structured training investment and clear salary benchmarking against industry surveys.
These are foundations that allow people to perform consistently.
Supporting careers
Another insight from the benchmarking process was the importance of long-term thinking.
The best communications professionals want a career path. That requires visible progression, structured development and policies that recognise loyalty over time.
As a result, our benefits now include expanded training budgets, formal development plans and long-service rewards such as additional leave and a paid sabbatical.
These policies recognise that experience strengthens an agency. Retaining talented people is commercially essential.
Culture still matters
Benchmarking also reinforced a more human truth: culture still plays a central role in agency life.
Regular recognition of exceptional work, shared team experiences and opportunities for volunteering help build the relationships that underpin trust. In an industry built on collaboration and judgement, those relationships matter.
But culture is strongest when supported by structure. Benefits and policies should reinforce culture rather than substitute for it.
A benefits strategy aligned with agency ambition
The outcome of our benchmarking exercise is a benefits structure designed to support both performance and longevity.
For employees, it means access to healthcare, flexibility and development opportunities that support demanding careers. For the agency, it means building a team capable of delivering the ambitious work our clients expect.
Ultimately, the logic is straightforward.
High standards require proper support. Agencies that recognise this will build stronger teams, better work and more sustainable businesses.
