IS YOUR AGENCY OVER-BOOKED AND UNDER-WORKED?

Every business needs creative branding and marketing resources.

There are many ways to source this, but if you use a big time agency or are considering hiring one, here’s something to think about:

THEY’RE NOT ABLE TO DO THE WORK

In Float’s recently released Global Agency Productivity Study, they discovered some enlightening (or alarming) insights about productivity issues in advertising agencies.

This doesn’t surprise me. I’ve lead and managed multiple creative departments and these were chronic problems.

Case in point - the lack of time and space to actually get the work done. 60% of respondents are only able to get two hours of “deep work” done a day.

Deep work is the work of focusing on coming up with ideas and solutions. Deep work is the actual work that is most valuable to clients.

Why does this happen you might wonder? It’s not because agency staff are lazy and irresponsible. Quite the opposite.

Here’s reason #1:

BECAUSE THEY’RE OVER-BOOKED

There is intense pressure in managing a creative department to maximize allocation. As staffing levels have been reduced and the emphasis is to populate the department with less-experienced staff (read less-expensive for the agency) over-allocation has become de facto SOP.

Why would over-booking decrease the ability to do the work? You might assume that having too much work to do would increase the amount time you would be doing the “deep” work of getting it done.

You would be wrong.

Over-booking metastasizes in several deceptively destructive ways.

Primarily, it puts into motion that insidious killer of productivity: internal meetings.

Briefings. Check-ins. Creative reviews. Brain storms. More reviews. More check ins. Over-booking is a time-suck force multiplier.

Compounding that is the timeline acceleration. More meetings in less time eats up the space to actually get the work done.

Which brings us to . . . space:

THERE’S NO SPACE TO THINK

The open office plan sucks for getting creative work done.

If you walk around a contemporary creative department here is what you will see:

Long tables of people sitting adjacent to each each other staring at oversize screens all wearing over-the-ear headphones. It’s the weirdest mix of communal isolation I’ve ever seen.

Agencies can house more staff in less real estate in an open office plan. Yes, everybody does this. Yes, it does create accessibility, but no it does not create the space necessary for “deep” work.

Thus, the “WFH” or remote work policy.

While working remotely doesn’t protect deep work space from conference calls and email invasion, it has become necessary to provide this as agency policy for agencies to compensate for the agency’s open office policy.

Ah, irony.

Which is how I will frame this last insight from the Float Study:

BUT HEY, THEY’RE HAPPY

Despite being over-booked and under-worked, a significant amount of staff is happy with their job.

That’s because, even with all the challenges and frustrations, advertising is fun.

Or at least it can be when you have the proper time and space to actually do it.

READ THE FULL REPORT BY CLICKING ON THE IMAGE BELOW -

---