Those of you who feel you're not sufficiently well rewarded for all your hard work should consider alerting your boss to the employee incentive techniques of German insurance outfit Ergo.

Back in 2007, the company's Hamburg-Mannheimer International subsidiary decided it would be a nice gesture to whisk 100 "particularly successful salesmen" to a Budapest thermal baths and offer them the services of 20 prostitutes.

According to business newspaper Handelsblatt, quoted by the BBC, one unnamed guest at the bash said participants were encouraged to accompany the ladies to four-poster beds "and do whatever they liked".

However, this being a German-run orgy, it was not an unseemly free-for-all, but an efficient affair in which the prostitutes "had worn colour-coded arm-bands designating their availability, and the women had their arms stamped after each service rendered".

Handelsblatt's informant told the paper: "After each such encounter the women were stamped on the lower arm in order to keep track of how often each woman was frequented."

He elaborated: "The women wore red and yellow wrist bands. One lot were hostesses, the others would fulfill your every wish. There were also women with white wrist bands. They were reserved for board members and the very best sales reps."

The Beeb notes that the orgy's organisers have since left Ergo. A spokesman for the company admitted the event had indeed taken place, but stressed "it was not the usual way of rewarding their employees". ®