At Your Service: Corporate Concierges Come in Three Varieties
August 25, 2008
By Nathan Adkisson
As career competition increases and employees feel pressure to get more work done in less time, companies are hiring corporate concierges to handle tasks like making restaurant reservations, booking hotels and buying concert tickets. Hundreds of these companies now exist, and there are at least three ways to hire a concierge: from a big corporation, from a boutique, or by bringing a full-time individual on staff.
Of Massachusetts General Hospital's 21,000 employees, almost 5,000 are provided with concierge service. For a job of this size, the hospital contracted Boston-based Circles, whose 900 employees are available to fulfill clients' wishes.
Mass General uses the concierge service as both a reward and a tool to keep employees focused on tasks at work.
"It's a great benefit for employees who are busy," says Victoria McCandless, director of human resources communications for the hospital. "Not everyone uses it, but they give us a quarterly feedback report so we can monitor how it's being used."
While Circles has almost 1,000 employees, Concierge of Boston, which aims for a much smaller, more exclusive relationship with its clients, has six. The founder, Gordon Jones Jr., left securities firm Kidder, Peabody & Co. to start the company in 1988, after noticing employees spending large amounts of work time on personal business. He claims to have invented the industry.
"We were the first, and the first year was spent developing relationships with restaurants and limousine companies," Jones says. "There was no Internet in those days, so we put together the best Rolodex in the world."
For a company to secure its services, Concierge of Boston charges what Jones calls a "hefty" annual retainer. They also take a commission between 6 and 20 percent of the amount spent on every event or item. He stresses the exclusivity of the business—after 20 years, Jones still answers the listed phone number personally.
The third option is to choose neither large nor small concierge company and instead add a full-time individual to the staff, as Google has done.
"We believe that work/life balance is key to a healthy working environment," says Courtney Tuckman, manager of culture communication for the company, which has made Fortune's list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For twice in a row. "We have an on-site concierge that helps employees take care of the tedious day-to-day tasks that are time-consuming and distracting during their workday."
For a company of Google's size, even Gordon Jones thinks the private route is best.
"They have thousands of employees," he says. "If I were them I would have hired someone full-time, too."
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