We know the marketing and advertising industry has a huge talent retention problem. Talent and creative workers have multiple job opportunities that don’t necessarily belong to the world of creative agencies, and the struggle to find and keep the best talent is real.
How can you entice your job propositions in such a competitive environment? Let’s take a look at possible ways for you to change the talent game to attract and retain them.
Keys to Attract and Retain the Best Talent
The days when a skilled worker dedicated their best years to a company on the basis of pure loyalty are over. The whole work field has changed, retirement plans are obsolete and millennial talent is always looking for better and greener pastures.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average tenure for the 25 to 34 age gap is around 3.2 years. This statistic is worrisome when put together with the cost of attrition, which amounts to the loss of 16% of an employee’s annual salary.
Creatives now have an enormous pool of prospect jobs, agencies must face the growing competition set forth by tech companies and the in-house market. When posting a job application in LinkedIn or other job-searching platforms, the amount of potential hires can be mind-blowing. But quantity does not correlate with quality potential employees.
Most likely the best applicants are not unemployed, but working for the competition, with a great salary and position they are not likely to abandon. How can a regular agency compete with titans such as Google, Facebook, million dollar tech companies and consultancies that can give their talent a great number of perks and benefits?
Work your strength to attract and retain them
A hiring process needs to be a designed strategy and not some one-time effort on the agency’s part to capture fresh meat. You need to emphasize the points that make your agency unique and a great place to invest key career growth years.
Creativity, company culture and strategies are what makes an agency great, and what could lure prospective employees away from in-house tech companies, where the creative glassdoor is a reality in that department. The hiring process needs to be developed in a way that levels the playing field and elevates looked-for-benefits, for the right talent.
Recruiting, a tough job
For top talent, it’s not only a matter of money, perks, big names on resumes and benefits. Creative people often look to develop their creative practice, they look for places that can improve their career advancement and not hinder their possibilities. When considering new opportunities they will most likely get on board at a place that will let them push boundaries, have new ways of thinking and allow for storytelling.
And this is not unique to advertising and marketing agencies. High tech and consultancies also offer demanding and problem solving environments that can satisfy job seekers’ cognitive and emotional fulfillment needs. Technology businesses are flowing towards creative design products, they usually count with deep pockets and great employer brands.
This is where agencies need to set themselves apart with smart employer branding. The best candidates want to work within a company that has a defined and distinctive feature. History is usually teached in 3 ways, Great men and women, Wars and conquest, and the study of social processes. The same can apply to companies, there are businesses founded by heavy hitting names, like Elon Musk and Bill Gates. Some are the victors of their area, like Google. People want to work for these companies because they stand out and are recognizable by their peers.
Regular agencies have a hard time differentiating themselves from other companies in their tier. Attract and retain talent is a challenge for any ad agency. A way to acquire great talent is to set yourself apart. What is your definitive quality? Your hiring design needs to take this in stride, from the job description to the work environment, you need to showcase the best feature of your agency. Awards, co-founders accomplishments, amazing perks, or work-life balance.
Auto-marketing to attract and retain talent
It’s usual to have a developed positioning strategy for attracting new clients, most commonly in the form of various digital marketing campaigns and leads generation. But what are you doing to present yourself to your possible talent pool?
The first question is if you’re at the place you want to be, you need to analyse how you are marketing yourself, and if this is enticing to future employees as well as prospective clients. How is the social media presence of the competition? This is not a simple strategy for recruiters, it should be an all around effort to improve the agency’s image, for new hires, customers, and employee retention.
How is Culture Involved?
The last issue brings us directly to the importance of agency culture, about what makes your agency unique, what separates it from others. And it’s a difficult area, it’s not a once in a while effort, it takes time and dedication to grow an attractive and real culture. This is where agencies have the possibility of gaining a battle against tech and consultancies titans. They could offer better salaries, but you can offer a more welcoming culture for potential new hires and for retaining top talent.
How can you effectively do this? By clarifying your values and agency mission from the get go, and keep them up to date. Translate this into an in-agency language. Use storytelling to create and improve your agency’s mythos, this is a key aspect of onboarding, letting new collaborators in on the joke.
There are no shortcuts to culture, you can’t fake a good working environment and happy employees, this is crucial. The bottom line is that top talent will know if you are lying, and if by a miracle they get on board, you will most likely lose them early on, costing you time and attrition fees.
Transparency
Let’s tackle that last idea. Basically if you want to bring the best talent onboard you need to be an agency that top talent would want to work with. No going around that. So what you can do, is you can implement long lasting changes, and communicate them in the most clear and transparent way. This is the key to marketing your brand towards possible to attract and retain creative talent.
Some of the best agencies invest time and effort developing their employer brand. Social media is a great way for achieving this, with programs that encourage the talent to share the positive aspects of their working environment. For this to work the well being of employees has to be genuine. It is vital that your collaborators are content, not only because they will work better that way, and won’t quit, they are the link to other potential hires as well. Would you recommend your company if you are unhappy? Didn’t think so. So how can you accomplish this?
Look for a project management software that can give you valuable insight into the working hours and conditions. Time tracking is gaining visibility as an amazing tool for minimizing burnout in the workforce and to improve your talent management.
Transparency during the hiring process is the key for fulfilled employees and less attrition costs.
This means being honest in job descriptions, if the creative position involves a certain amount of clerical tasks then communicate it to possible hires. It’s better to have a smaller pool of talent, than onboarding someone who will leave when they come upon mundane tasks.
If you are in a culture change period advertise it, it shows you are transparent and that there is room to grow. Creatives value certain perks that come with the position, listen to them and implement the changes you can. Flexible hours, remote work, training and giving your employees the freedom of working how they prefer goes a long way for taking care of the creative talent.
Taking Care of Your Senior Talent
Acknowledgement, feedback, and engagement. Having a good communication and collaboration system will make your long lasting employees feel encouraged and supported. Consistent praise is a good way to motivate your hard working employees, and it comes at absolutely no cost.
And an even better way of taking care of your more senior talent is to help them stay on top of their work, by investing in good and user-friendly solutions that automate the boring and avoidable aspects of their job.
Many people change jobs due to better salaries, perks, and benefits. This is no news. But there are others that eventually change companies because their excellent work often goes unnoticed, or their talents are being wasted on un-challenging tasks. Look for the employees that due to their personality don’t stand out and check their progress, their finished projects, their metrics. Enquire if they fill fulfillment in their daily tasks, and ask them if they have ideas on how to manage their expectations.
It’s not rare to find top creative performers on non customer related jobs. IT, sales, finance, these are vital business sectors that often go unnoticed in agencies. Hard working project managers that connect teams and improve collaboration in the agency.
You need to be able to see this phenomenon, you will need a project management software that counts with a reporting feature that can help you cross examine different information, and that has a historical data bank. This way you reduce personal bias, as well as helping you select which employees are your better performers.
Investing in Supporting and Training Employees
One of the best ways of retaining the best talent is to support them and encourage them to achieve their maximum professional development. When you tend to your talent pool’s curiosity and aspirations you can expect better performing employees with sharper skills and a higher sense of loyalty to the agency.
For a better working environment you need to dedicate time for training promoted employees on management dexterity. You also need to invest in state of the art solutions for your project managers, after all, one works better with sharper tools. Look for AI and machine learning capabilities in your PM software, automation will save countless work hours.
Train your managers in leadership skills, and if you have the company structure, think about implementing a mentorship program between senior and junior members, this can skyrocket the in-house collaboration atmosphere.
Agencies are part of a vertical market, and require vertical solutions to take full advantage of their resources, especially human resources and time. When you are aware of the performance metrics you can see which employees need more training on certain skills, and which could be a good fit for promotions or more challenging projects.
When you support the creative talent and let their aspirations run free, you will count with the much needed support of your workforce. The best creative talent wants to work within an agency that challenges them and supports their professional growth.
Creatives are a unique and talented group of people. They need motivation, and constant training. It’s time to take the matter of industry working conditions into your own hands. Ask yourself if you are really taking care of your talent.
With automated tasks and simple time tracking functionalities you can gain valuable information on which employees have a full schedule and abide by their working hours, assigning tasks to other members of your team. You can see where they might struggle and train them in that area.
At COR we have a great interest in the problems that plague the advertising and marketing industry. Talent burnout and retention being one of them. Traceability, transparency and data analysis are just some of the ways you can take the next step into keeping your creatives satisfied and healthy. Ask for a demo, and see for yourself how much information can help your agency reach its full potential.
