The Financial Times is offering a subsidy / payment to ALL of its 1,800 staff – to cover the purchase of ‘a personal iPad or tablet’. Given that there are not very may tablet options out there (and early reviews of the only real rival, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, are not stellar) that sounds like a whole lot of iPads in a whole lot of happy FTers hands soon.
Here are a few excerpts from the FT’s memo to staff on this:
“I’m pleased to let you know that we are launching today a new initiative that will allow FT staff to claim a £300 (€350/ US$480) subsidy for the purchase of a personal iPad or tablet. This will run from today until 30th June 2011.
The FT is making this investment because digital channels and tablet devices are becoming increasingly important for us and the media industry in general, and as recognition of your contribution to our strong performance this year.
… “We have seen rapid growth in readership on these new devices, which support and extend our “channel neutral” strategy. Given their importance and the wave of innovation that we are seeing in applications and services,we want to encourage all our staff to be expert and experienced in using them.
“The subsidy scheme will be combined with a series of masterclasses and workshops to help staff get the most from their devices and the applications that are currently available.”
So clearly the iPad is seen as both a major reward to staff for their contributions to the FT’s success and a device that they’re strongly encouraging staff to get to know, as devices of this type are key to their future efforts. I think that’s a very good call by FT management, on both counts but especially on the second point. I’ve seen a number of newspaper and magazine iPad editions that utterly fail to embrace what the iPad is and what their iPad versions could be. This initiative should help the FT to gain a better understanding of the device and hopefully lead to more enhancements and improvements to its own app – Financial Times iPad Edition.
Do any of you work at an organization where they are offering iPads or iPad subsidies to employees?