The PRCA’s inaugural Ethical Champions saw agencies in five categories achieve recognition as leaders in ethical excellence.

Ethical Champions is the latest step in the PRCA’s work to raise standards and celebrate those who uphold the highest standards, providing a guiding light for the entire PR and communications industry.

The five categories are:

• Very small agency: Up to £500k turnover
• Small agency: £501k to £1.5m turnover
• Medium agency: £1.51m to £2.5m turnover
• Large agency: £2.51m to £5m turnover
• Very large agency: More than £5m turnover

The winners are Lansons in the ‘very large agency’ category, Citypress in the ‘Large agency’ category, Dynamo in the ‘Medium agency’ category, Muckle Media in the ‘Small agency’ category and Long Run Works in the ‘Very small agency’ category.

Francis Ingham MPRCA, director general, PRCA, says, “One of the PRCA’s key priorities is to raise ethical standards within the PR and communications industry, which is why we launched Ethical Champions. Once again, we have been hugely impressed by the fact that this industry actively wants to be held to the most rigorous professional and ethical expectations. Congratulations to all of our winners, and thank you to everyone for getting involved in Ethical Champions 2017.”

To be an ethical champion, PR and communications agencies had to demonstrate the following four key attributes:

Staff welfare: Do you believe that a happy, healthy staff leads to a better service for clients? Do you do the utmost to ensure their wellbeing?

Ethical account management: Are you mindful of the moral aspects of account work? Are your staff encouraged to express their own ethical concerns?

Recruitment and retention: How do you ensure that interview candidates are sourced from the broadest pool? How do you ensure that interns are given valuable, structured internships?

Ethical business practices: What structures do you have in place to ensure that the way that you do business is as ethical as possible?