Getting to grips with resourcing and planning; back to basics for creative agencies
Attracting and retaining talent should be at the forefront of every people-based firm and is essential for the marcoms industry where success can be attributed to the individual and cumulative skills of a creative team. Yet, in today’s environment we are in a unique position which was summed up effectively by Sir Martin Sorrell when he said “supply exceeds demand – except in talent”. This begs the question, what are UK creative agencies doing to reverse the decline in the talent pool?
Raymond Kieser
In the first instance it is about attracting the right skills and according to some in the industry, although it is difficult to recruit the right talent now, it will only be harder in 20 years’ time. That’s not the end of it either, once you find the right person then not only do you need to make sure you keep a hold of them, but you need to ensure your team is working at optimum productivity levels for the best chance at success.
Companies with engaged employees outperform those without by up to 22 percent and according to the IPA, the cost of replacing top talent within an agency can be up to 150 percent of their annual salary. This means that not only is there a strong interpersonal and cultural incentive to building a collaborative and multi-talented team, but also a significant financial incentive also.
So how should agencies go about building teams and resourcing projects to get the best possible outcome? According to the industry professionals we spoke to, it involves a number of factors including promoting a productive workplace, planning for what lies ahead, ensuring strategic use of freelancers and garnering a better understanding of the reason behind staff turnover.
More specifically, comments were made about matching systems to processes and having useful little tricks, like recording time straight from calendars or tracking availability to match the right people to the right projects. Agency management systems are perfectly primed to support these kind of processes and instinctively respond to many of the issues agencies face when looking at retaining talent and effectively resourcing.
Agencies who get smart about how they build teams and distribute resources will find that sourcing and retaining talent is less of an issue. It won’t happen overnight but building a reputation never does.
Raymond Kieser is global practice director of marcoms at Deltek.
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