A London-based recruitment firm saw its video, which depicts a summer incentive in which its employees go on a luxury holiday, become the target of ridicule after it went viral.

The 43-second video, produced by recruitment firm Haigh Associates, shows six young men in a montage of the men walking into a meeting room, getting into and then getting out of a luxury car, playing ping-pong in the office and then concludes with the young men boarding a private jet. 

Haigh Associates posted the video on its Twitter and Linkedin page which was then first shared by Stevie Buckley, co-founder at job board Honest Work. The post has since been mocked on Twitter with some of the reactions comparing it to a parody of the recruitment industry. The video was also criticised for featuring mostly white men.

Jesse Gray, the co-founder of Haigh Associates, responded to the criticism, stating, “Very proud to share a clip which gives an insight into the culture, environment and incentives we offer to our top performers at Haigh. This gives a glimpse into out summer incentive top billers trip in which we took the top performers on a private jet, all expenses paid trip to Ibiza.”

In a LinkedIn post, Kane Fallon, director and co-founder of Haigh Associates, responded to the criticism of the video, “Find it rather remarkable to see how quickly people make inaccurate assumptions about our firm from a 45-second clip. To clarify the purpose of this was purely to promote our company incentives. Our company values have not been portrayed in this clip as 45 seconds wouldn’t be long enough to achieve this.”

Fallon also responded to criticism from having mostly men in the video.

“It just so happens our top performers on this specific incentive happened to be all male; from the comments, it appears as though we shouldn’t reward hard work but we should be rewarding employees taking gender into account (surely this screams discrimination?),” Fallon said. Fallon also pointed to the company’s charitable work as a way that Haigh Associates demonstrates its values.