BREAKING NEWS: P&G win gold on the mumsnet family awards (which they sponsor)

[iloveberries]

Anyone else a bit cynical about this and think that P&G have basically 'bought' the award. My best friend and husband used to work there (how i met him) and I can guarantee they are anything BUT family friendly to work for!!!

Oh really, greythorne! Do as I say not do as I do...

Rule of weird...now that's a rule I like.

Has she gone back to her corporate lair?

Really need to go to sleep but I'm stunned by this car crash of a thread.

'P & G' must be cacking it to have got Justine out of bed to post.

Weirder than wierd.

Have to say the devil in me does enjoy watching when an action or post by mnhq goes tits up in some way. Just remember justine This too will pass

Btw do you work for p&g mtg? (well everyone else was asking)

You cynical lot. :) I think the style of MTG's posting has made people suspicious but tbh Justine's information regarding how the awards were decided, has been largely ignored. Either you don't believe her (justine) or didn't read it that carefully?

I think MTG should have qualified her 'knowledge' with the circumstances she obtained it. It's fairly simple to say; I used to work for them/a family member works for them. Had she initially done that, this thread may not have panned out the way it has done

I also believe MTG is posting genuinely- I think she believes, everything she posts. Whether you accept it, is based on her posting style (slightly evangelistic and therefore odd).

It doesn't mean she is a fraud/troll/liar. It also doesn't reflect on P&G necessarily.

Real and 'qualified' experience is needed for that....which brings me back to Justine's explanation of how the awards were decided. Do you think she is lying?

It's a shame that this thread has panned out this way as I was interested to hear of people's real life experiences with P&G. I work for a similarly large company with similarly great sounding policies however in practice they don't deliver them. In summary (from personal / colleague's experience) in my company:

• I have been declined access to the companies childcare voucher scheme which is advertised as available to all employees.

• colleague was denied part time working as it is up to the 'managers discretion'. The manager need not provide any reason for declining the request.

• my contract is 37.5 hours bit I would usually work between 50 and 60 hours a week and unlike MTG suggested it was not because I wanted to. I was expected to. I'd like to see some examples of companies where people actually do work only their contracted hours and still get decent promotions and pay rises..

I could go on.

It is difficult for this to be a proper debate when MTG would list HR facts but no real life experiences or evidence yet demands evidence for everyone else's point of view.

Whole bizarre thread makes me inclined to think that P&G is as bad as my own company.

Can anyone actually recommend a good family friendly company to work for?

They may or may not be family friendly, but if MTG does work for them I think she might just have discovered that they are not muppet friendly :)

This thread stinks of shit and the MNHQ interventions just discredit it even more.

wow! a lot happened since i logged off at 9.30!

greythorne you're a smart lady.
shirley you're a funny lady
1309 your posts about being from the competition made me laugh!

MTG so now you're a teacher? Thanks to whoever solved that one. Funny that you LOVE P&G so much but yet have ended up doing them nothing but damage.

Interesting article here:
www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/1052280/
and here
www.marketingweek.co.uk/sectors/fmcg/mumsnet-hands-pg-%E2%80%9Cfamily-friendly%E2%80%9D-endorsement/3031535.article

So P&G (one of mumsnets big advertisers) can now display their logo, and no mention of an 'independent' staff survey. Instead official selection criteria was pretty vague.

I would love to see the details of this survey as at the moment i imagine it was a survey of three (MD/HR director/CEO) with one question "would you like to put our logo on your pack in response for lots of jollies together and lots of ad money? "are you very family friendly?"

I LOVED mumsnet and always loved the fact they seemed genuinely there for mums. Now it seems they're just another greedy company who doesn't really respect us and thinks we're a little bit fluffy in the head and can be marketed at without figuring anything out for ourselves.....

So it looks now that this makes Mumsnet look just as bad as P&G. that genuinely makes me sad :(

Mummmmmy and toothbrush, at last some sensible responses.

As for a real family friendly company, I do know of one, friend works for (won't name sorry)

She has taken normal maternity leave but on returning to work has always kept to 8am to 5.30 unless there has been a major issue or she is away overnight which is unusual

She has flown through up the ladder, being promoted as you would expect, never held back for refusing to double her hours. She also asks expects her team not to do overtime.

reads memo

In contrast to my previous post I would like to say that Oil of Olay only ever gave me happiness, I could not have been more mistaken.

In addition I would like to remind everyone that not only do P&G give every employee a free nanny, to be used as they will, they also have the best in-office birthing pods in the City, so time away from the desk is minimised and productivity thus maximised.

As any casual user of the internet will know, this stacks with the 94% rate of neonatal satisfaction with Pampers, the 48.2% increase in tagnut removal by Charmin, and the fantastic new feature that allows pets to talk if fed on IAMS.

Sadly, Weaning Pringles didn't play so well amongst parents who could read, so we P&G had to get rid of the brand earlier this year.

burns memo, immolates self

Marking place. Will be late for school thanks to reading this all this morning.

Oh dear

IMO and IME the companies that need to "win" awards for being family-friendly, or life-work balance friendly, are the ones who have major HR issues to overcome. I once worked for a firm that had really terrible HR practices, so terrible that they interfered really badly with recruitment and retention; it still does, but it has fiddled its way to making sure that potential recruits, and even employees, no longer believe its practices are inhumane and abhorrent. Winning "awards" for best practice and shouting about it in the press is one way of pulling the wool over employees' eyes...

My thought all through this thread has been that 'Mindthegap' is somehow connected to Mumsnet towers? A researcher on their pay roll etc? Or something similar. Could be way out of course.

Bruxeur

Cortina, we'd all like to think that MNHQ had a little bit more, erm, finesse than that...

As would I.

For some reason it was just that was in my head as I read the posts and then I saw the comment from mumsnet itself...

Anyway I do know someone very well who works for P&G. They are female and their very hard work is well regarded and highly rewarded. They have a nanny and a DH who has a part-time job who does school run and family life type stuff in the week. I have never heard any complaints about it not being woman friendly etc just that you are expected to work incredibly hard and be very committed.

According to Marketing Week, P&G won the award "for its commitment not to use peer-to-peer marketing or child brand ambassadors." For that, they receive the Gold Award .

www.marketingweek.co.uk/sectors/fmcg/mumsnet-hands-pg-?family-friendly?-endorsement/3031535.article

In a previous life, I worked with brands advising them how to get endorsements and awards such as this. One high profile P&G brand had a "partnership" (we weren't allowed to call it an endorsement) with "The British Skin Foundation".....all I can say is, the average punter would be, ahem, surprised at how such partnerships come about.

That P&G have won this award surprises me not at all. But it doesn't make me believe they have family friendly practices.

Well, well...fortunately for Justine, she is a rare pearl who has always remarkably radiant, so we will never know what unguents are currently gracing the Towers' stock cupboard, will we?

"our awards are based on a an independent audit of staff as well as an audit by Mumsnetters and we do believe they are pretty robust. "

I'd like to hear more about this independent audit of staff...