It's called the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) and it is a set of regulations at the heart of a new rule in England that could completely undermine the practice of switching advertising agencies.
The upshot is this: when an advertising agency acquires a new account, they are required by law to also bring on board some of the employees who worked on the account at the previous agency. Uhm, wasn't the whole point of switching agencies in the first place to get away from those very people in the first place?
When you stop gaping in disbelief, read the whole New York Times article where Kerry Glazer, managing director of AAR, a London-based consulting firm comments: "If agencies have to employ groups of people they don't want, or have to pay to make them redundant, that's going to hurt profitability. While agencies in the past might have worried most about losing business, now I suppose you have to think, commercially, 'What would this mean were we to win it?' "
The upshot is this: when an advertising agency acquires a new account, they are required by law to also bring on board some of the employees who worked on the account at the previous agency. Uhm, wasn't the whole point of switching agencies in the first place to get away from those very people in the first place?
When you stop gaping in disbelief, read the whole New York Times article where Kerry Glazer, managing director of AAR, a London-based consulting firm comments: "If agencies have to employ groups of people they don't want, or have to pay to make them redundant, that's going to hurt profitability. While agencies in the past might have worried most about losing business, now I suppose you have to think, commercially, 'What would this mean were we to win it?' "
