{"id":5014,"date":"2018-12-02T11:30:42","date_gmt":"2018-12-02T11:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/ted-baker-staff-launch-petition-over-boss-hugs\/"},"modified":"2018-12-02T11:30:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-02T11:30:42","slug":"ted-baker-staff-launch-petition-over-boss-hugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/ted-baker-staff-launch-petition-over-boss-hugs\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Baker staff launch petition over boss ‘hugs’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"RayImage copyright<\/span>
\n Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image caption<\/span>
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\n Ted Baker founder Ray Kelvin famously refuses to show his full face in photos
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\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Staff at fashion group Ted Baker allege there is a culture of “forced hugging” by the firm’s founder and boss, which they are now demanding be ended.<\/p>\n

A petition, launched by an employee, also accuses 62-year-old Ray Kelvin of inappropriate comments and behaviour.<\/p>\n

“It is part of a culture that leaves harassment unchallenged,” they claim.<\/p>\n

The company, which issues a trading update on Thursday, says hugs are “part of Ted Baker’s culture, but are absolutely not insisted upon”.<\/p>\n

It said Mr Kelvin greeted many people with a hug, “be it a shareholder, investor, supplier, partner, customer or colleague”.<\/p>\n

‘Clear and robust HR policies’<\/h2>\n

Ted Baker also said that the matters raised in the petition were “at odds with the values of our business and those of our CEO”.<\/p>\n

But it said it would “ensure a thorough independent investigation is carried out” into the allegations.<\/p>\n

One of the complaints made in the petition, launched on the workplace site Organise, is that previous complaints have been ignored.<\/p>\n

“Please set up a way of reporting harassment to an independent, external body – HR has done nothing with the reports of harassment to date,” says the petition.<\/p>\n

But the firm said there were “very clear and robust HR policies in place to provide all employees with a wide range of reporting options for any issues that they might encounter, including a completely confidential and anonymous, 24\/7 helpline”.<\/p>\n

Ted Baker, named after a fictitious alter ego of Mr Kelvin, opened its the first store in Glasgow in 1988 and now has 544 outlets worldwide selling fashion and accessories.<\/p>\n

Mr Kelvin is worth \u00a3522m according to the Sunday Times Rich List.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Ted Baker founder Ray Kelvin famously refuses to show his full face in photos Staff at fashion group Ted Baker allege there is a culture of “forced hugging” by the firm’s founder and boss, which they are now demanding be ended. A petition, launched by an employee, also accuses … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}