An awards scheme which sees journalists receive £50 shopping vouchers for good work has been put on hold by a regional publisher.
Johnston Press has announced it has paused the On The Spot due to “a number of reasons” including cost management.
However, the company is set to review the scheme in 2016 and plans to “relaunch” it in future.
The move was announced in an internal memo to JP staff from the company’s HR director Brian Low, which has been seen by HTFP.
It reads: ” For a number of reasons, including cost management, we decided to put the scheme on hold and review how it has been working.
“We have also identified it wasn’t working as well as we would have expected, for example the authorisation process was at times too time consuming.
“I am working with a number of colleagues to fine tune and simplify the administration end of the process before we relaunch it, particularly how we do that in light of the organisation changes.
“I will however be looking to get something out to coincide with relaunching it in the near future. If you do have views on the scheme, that you think is worthwhile for us to consider for the future, please do let me know.”
The On The Spot scheme was originally launched in June 2014 as part of a three-pronged Employee Recognition Programme.
It also included quarterly business recognition awards in each of the company’s regional publishing units, and an annual company-wide awards scheme.
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What absolute disingenuous twaddle has been trotted out to justify the end of this beggarly little “reward scheme”. If only Mr Charles Dickens was still with us he would have come up with an appropriate yarn to describe this farce… oh, hold on, he already has.
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Oh dear, I hope Ashley’s next pay rise isn’t similarly affected.
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I do hope that Ashley Highfield’s reward for taking the company to where it now is, is put on hold!
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They would have been better leaving that in the first place to be honest.
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Staff at JP (inc me) are now genuinely worried the company won’t see Spring.
Office supplies are not being ordered until “the new year” same with freelance and picture budgets.
The share price is now less than 1p.
Something very big and very bad is in the air
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They can’t even get this right. Yet they can appoint an editor-in-chief and create another tier of management.
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I’m not much in favour of these incentives after one of my clock-watching colleagues got a company gong when the rest of us were putting in hours of unpaid overtime for no thanks whatsoever.
Share price 39p, lowest ever. I gave Ashley 18 months a while ago. I’ll have to check my calendar and see how much longer he’s got left.
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What an absolute shower. Total shambles. Couldn’t organise a p***-up in a brewery. They have lost all respect and deserve everything that’s coming to them. Time to go, Mr H. Time to go.
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desker’s comment suggests something far more profound is happening than just the scrapping of a journalists’ incentive scheme. Any intrepid reporters out there who can enlighten us? Is JP terminal?
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It wasn’t just an editorial incentive scheme, it was for ALL staff in JP, and they’ve obviously been thinking about cutting these for a long time, as I know 2 people who were put forward for one each, in August 2014, and just so happened that “they disappeared” off the face of the earth, into a giant Black Hole, never to be seen again ( the rewards not the staff).
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They also recently stopped doing food reviews at my local paper. They cost too much apparently. I think next year will see many papers moving to online only. It’s the only cost-cutting measure they can possibly impose now, given they’ve stopped buying stationery, stopped keeping their archives up to date, stopped replacing broken computers…
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Ashley seemed quite upbeat in his last statement. Genuinely, does he know something no-one else does.On the face of it JP looks doomed. Does anyone in the company (outside the usual middle management brown-nosers) actually feel it has a good future. It would be good to hear from one or two in case a false picture is emerging. I know a lot of decent people working for the company and I would feel better if their prospects were brighter than they look on the surface.
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I see the share price has again tumbled after this latest round of appalling mismanagement. you cannot fool The City.
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*tumbleweed blows through comment space…*
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My earlier comment didn’t make it. Not sure why. I’ll try again.
The big institutional investors cashed in their chips some time ago. The IIs only ever do that when they can’t see any short term or long term recovery. Every trade today has been a sell. Presumably these are JP staff getting a few quid for Christmas.
The slide will continue.
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A December squeeze on costs is to be expected; especially if the financial year is a calendar one.
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Oh dear, even those of us who are half full find this one a bit tricky.
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If JP was in a boxing match the referee would have stopped it long ago, with Ashley Highfield very much on the ropes.
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Richard Weston: ironic post? No new stationery a “squeeze on costs”? That’s practically heart failure for a business. I agree with desker’s “Something very big and very bad is in the air.”
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So the scheme needs suspending and reviewing because it is ‘too time consuming’ and the company needs to ‘cost manage’ (dare I go for the phrase ‘save money’?)
So the solution is to get a company director (who probably isn’t the worst paid member of JP’s staff) and ‘a number of colleagues’ to fine tune it.
I’d say that is a very constructive use of those precious resources.
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There may be trouble ahead. Info just come through that a big investor just sold 100,000 JP shares at 37.5p. This looks grim.
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This is the end – Adele (Skyfall)
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Hang on, hang on, cost cutting, am i missing something? What about getting rid of these so called consultants working for us costing a blooming fortune. Why not use the people we have?
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Share price dropped to 37.5p at close today. 0.75p in old money, meaning a company value less than £40M. One person sold 100,000 shares at that price, which would have been a huge loss. A recent report said the shares may drop to 25p.
http://www.directorstalkinterviews.com/johnston-press-plc-45-1-potential-decrease-indicated-by-peel-hunt/412685979
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Let’s hope JP CEO Mr Ashley Highfield puts his next bonus “on hold”.
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Something very strange going on with JP shares. A huge £200k share purchase just announced even though the 500,000 shares were bought two days ago. I smell fish.
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The curtain is closing on this business. JP will be gone in 6 months. It will lead to consolidation and cherry picking.
It is impossible for websites to compete under their old titles – they have to work regionally.
EG One North East website could work, one South Yorkshire, One Kent etc. Otherwise web traffic is being spread too thinly.
The future of regional journalism is not for profit companies. The days of big cash wadding firms are over – the numbers just don’t stack up.
This is not some lefty rant but simple economics – the model does not work. It’s being a balls up. Ironically there are still small print titles making money – ran tight and well they can work.
Good bye JP
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Harry Blackwood – And apart from a few people on HTFP (and our colleagues of course) no one seems that bothered. Very little comment on the City pages, in share chat rooms or media industry sites. I know Christmas starts early in the Square Mile but?
Perhaps JP is now really just a little company that, God forbid, could slip quietly beneath the waves.
Very sad.
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JP has been a horror story since Highfields arrival. No respect for the newspapers or staff that generate the bulk of the revenue. Awful templated designs, slow websites, red tape at every turn – no commercial strategy. Commercial Leaders at a senior level are politicians, increasingly everything centralised to the hilt. Loads of clueless ‘Chiefs’ and less and less knowledgable ‘Indians’ by the day. Self destruction by a clueless board, senior team – gets worse each day none of them in it for the long term.
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