Global Reporting Initiative Reports

Worker Participation, Consultation and Communication on OHS

Interpublic Group (IPG) communicates essential health and safety information across our agencies and offices in several ways. IPG continually considers the feedback of employees on various topics, including health and well-being.

Interpublic Group (IPG) communicates essential health and safety information across our agencies and offices in several ways. IPG continually considers the feedback of employees on various topics, including health and well-being.

Employee wellness offerings provide a layer of preventive health and support overall well-being. Examples of recent employee wellness events and communications at IPG include:

• Wellness challenges and championships
• Lunch and learn
• Self-care emails and newsletters
• Themed employee awareness campaigns
• Trainings on stress reduction and sleep disorders
• Yoga

In addition, IPG’s Crisis Preparedness program supports an office-based Incident Management Team which is responsible for communicating with employees, clients and other stakeholders to ensure the health and safety guidelines are followed and to ensure effective incident management procedures are in place and ready for use at each office location.

IPG’s Crisis Preparedness program has a long history of communicating regularly to our registered list of internal contact points for each location. Our preparedness web portal platform allows IPG colleagues and agencies to share experiences and best practices in responding to various incidents. We believe this regular practice helps build a culture of constant awareness and education about disaster response and business continuity, and defines the responsibilities for safety across the entire organization.

During the emergence of COVID-19, IPG took immediate steps to protect our people demonstrating the soundness of our existing employee notification systems for alerting workers, as we engaged them in ongoing consultation and communication about health and safety issues. Below are examples of how we leveraged our existing systems during the pandemic:

• “Interpublic Preparedness” is IPG’s internal employee website providing numerous employee services and resources to support our Preparedness program and workforce notification system. This includes issuing information on business travel safety advisory services and business continuity plans, as well as access to IPG’s Crisis Preparedness Handbook.
• “Send Word Now” is an emergency notification service to provide mass alerts, in the event that all other communications fail. IPG agencies are offered training in using the service.

• Internal Crisis Contact List: IPG employees are informed of changes to and newly available crisis and safety resources and tools through a focused mailing list of 1,400 designated crisis contacts throughout the network. For example, when IPG set up the “COVID-19 Watch” dashboard we informed the designated crisis contacts and location incident managers, who then disseminated this information throughout our entire network.