Cash in hand

Once upon a time a golden hello was reserved for people who had a second home in Tuscany and sent their children to school in Switzerland.

Only last month Barclays Bank lured someone from rival Citibank with a one-off payment of cash and shares not far off £9m. But such bonuses are no longer the exclusive preserve of city types.

In the past three years the practice of paying so-called golden hellos has grown in the QSing and project management professions. The cash on offer is slightly more down to earth compared with Barclays' offer, but the deals are not to be sniffed at. Davis Langdon, for example, is paying up to £5,000 to certain new recruits.

Gareth Broadrick, senior manager of Hays Property & Surveying, says golden hellos for QSs and PMs are most common in three main hubs of construction activity: London, Birmingham, and Leeds. Here, firms are competing for the top 10% of candidates.

The deals are also more likely to be on offer at bigger consultancies because they will have more money to invest in staff. Broadrick says the practice began in the construction consultancy sector around three years ago at Davis Langdon, EC Harris and Gardiner & Theobald.

He says: "QSs are tight by their very nature so the golden hellos aren't huge." They are most commonly offered to graduates, who might get between £2,000 and £3,000. But Broadrick says they are increasingly being dangled in front of 25 to 26-year-olds who have finished their APC. These staff will be offered a slightly higher amount of cash - typically £4,000 to £5,000. This is commensurate with their higher salaries, which tend to be around £28,000 to £33,000.

The golden hello is a bit smash and grab

Andrew Williams, managing director, F+A

The practice also happens at more senior levels. One large QS firm admits to enticing a partner with a £10,000 payment. But golden hellos are less common for those already in the market for salaries upwards of £45,000, according to Broadrick.

This is played out at Davis Langdon, where senior partner Rob Smith says: "We recently recruited a couple of very senior people and we have not found it necessary to pay a golden hello. They had heard of us and they wanted to work for us."

But he concedes that the firm offers company cars and for "ambitious people" it will guarantee promotion by a certain time, subject to them meeting targets. He adds that these targets might be within easy reach, such as keeping a client satisfied or finishing a specific project successfully.

Davis Langdon's HR partner Jill Prett says it is different at lower levels. Graduates are often offered £2,000 to help with costs associated with starting work, including relocating and buying a new wardrobe. She says "joining bonuses" are far less common at higher levels, but would be offered occasionally in particular circumstances, such as when someone had to relocate.

Prett adds that Davis Langdon tries to attract employees with a range of other benefits, including flexible working hours, training and schemes to help them buy bicycles and computers (see box).

At Franklin + Andrews a similar approach is in place. Andrew Williams, managing director, says golden hellos are "all part of the recruitment policy, it's in the industry, we understand it".

A golden hello is a good ace to have up your sleeve...

Gareth Broadrick, senior manager, Hays Property & Surveying

F+A offers graduates around £2,000, while more experienced consultants might be given a golden hello on a discretionary basis. "I rely on my regional managers to make the call," says Williams.

But he has reservations: "The golden hello is a bit smash and grab. It's more important to me to offer people a career where it's in my interest and their interest to make it work."

Other firms are weighing up whether to start offering golden hellos to graduates: At Cyril Sweett, chairman Francis Ives says: "We are discussing how to make ourselves more attractive to graduates, including helping them repay their student loans. It could be that we loan them the money but if they stay with us for a number of years they would not have to pay it back."

He adds that the firm offers a bounty of around £3,000 to internal staff who introduce people to the firm. "It's a successful way of recruiting as people won't recommend someone who isn't any good because it would reflect badly on them. We recruit numbers of people in the tens this way every year," he says.

Ives would also be prepared to pay a bonus to a new recruit who approached the firm direct, although no such payment has happened yet. "Bearing in mind the amount of money agents charge us, we would not have an issue with somebody who approached us without an agency and wanted to share the saving."

QS firms outside the top 10 appear less keen to offer golden hellos. Rob Kennedy, director at MDA Consulting, sees them as a "last resort". He says: "The concept is interesting but as a general rule it's not something we would consider. We have found we can find people at various levels by the normal routes: word of mouth or networking."

Broadrick disagrees: "A golden hello is a good ace to have up your sleeve... £3,000 is nothing for a company compared to being late on a project and losing £30m." But ultimately, he says, market conditions will determine how prevalent the golden hello becomes. The more some firms add them to their standard package, the more other firms will have to follow suit. With the competition to recruit QSs and PMs becoming ever more intense, it seems likely that the golden hello can only continue to rise. Perhaps that Tuscan villa is a more realistic dream than you thought.