why ad agencies are rubbish at HR and talent

apparently one of the worst jobs ever

This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently, as I've just left a really good job in a great agency to try going freelance.

Iain's written a nice post about how it's hard to get and retain motivated, creative, multi-skilled people, because, put simply, if they're that good, they'll go do their own thing.

I then read this awfully arrogant article, by a freelance computer programmer, on Reddit:


Working a real job is a win if you're lazy, greedy, or unmotivated. If you're average, you fit right in. And if you're above average, the basic terms of employment and premise of the arrangement is against your interests.


So in the face of this attitude (which I don't agree with), how can you retain smart, entrepreneurial people?


This is a prime example of how advertising agencies totally fail to walk their own talk.


You get the best people by making your work environment so unbelievably, jaw-droppingly cool, that it's legendary to work there.


You get the best financial and care packages for your staff - healthcare, profit shares, all that kind of normal stuff. You also need the best working processes that give your staff freedom to work effectively on interesting stuff.

Those are hygiene factors - all your competitors will start to offer the same anyway.


Then, the real work starts. You have to now make sure that your workplace is the arguably coolest place to work in the whole world. You have to add little flashes of cool to every single touchpoint with your employees - you know, the kind of the thing we tell our client brands to do to their consumers.

Ad agencies are still totally stuck in the 80s when it comes to all this stuff. Think of all the agencies you've been to with massive plush meeting rooms, but with their creatives sat 9-6 in call centre conditions just upstairs. All the while we're telling clients that consumers have all the power now, and it's about real values and authenticity.

The sad thing is that business knows this already - Google's market is the most creative and talent-driven business in the world today, and their office is a total geek's dream.


link to video of Google offices on YouTube

It really annoys me when top creative agencies do things like rewarding employees with iPods to keep them motivated - how unimaginative is that? Would you dare suggest such a mundane promotion for your clients?

Photo from Monky

"You're very creative. Have an iPod."

Some numbered points:

1. People will do irrational things if they're in love. You tell your clients this is true for consumers of their FMCG brands, so believe it's true for your employees and your agency. People will pay £3 quid for fruit in a bottle, and they'll stay in jobs where they could be paid a few more grand elsewhere.

2. It's hard work, and there's no one-size-fits-all solution - building a GooglePlex wouldn't be right for keeping talent at JWT. You need to understand your agency brand, understand your staff and have creative ideas which resonate deeply within both.

3. It's not going to be cheap, but it will work out in the long run, and being creative can achieve better results than unimaginative spending.

4. People follow other people - especially the active ones who create the agency culture. So you have to put extravagant effort into keeping these people. For example, when a very "on-culture" person has leaves an agency, the sense of loss is huge compared to the job-importance of that person. I remember feeling like this when Cookie left my old agency, and I didn't even know him that well then.

If you look at that list - it's all painfully obvious stuff that we present to clients again and again, but somehow we think it doesn't apply to the people we employ.

This would be a good time to name drop Work Club, where my friend Charlotte has just joined. They also believe that agency HR practices are in need of a shake up, and have a number of neat innovations, like planner-creative teams, and giving people a lot of freedom and flexibility in the way they work.

Anyone else seen any good workplace HR innovations?