Page 56 - Adnews Magazine November-December 2021

Investigation
release or awards entry and what you’ll find is a pile of frogshit.
“What I’d like to ask agencies is this: What are your real tangible actions around staff retention? Where are the stats and metrics to back up your claims? Instead of giving staff an extra doona day, how are you addressing the issue of burnout with substantial sus- tainable help.
“The churn-and-burn mental- ity coupled with low pay should be a thing of the past. Talent short- ages and ‘the big resignation’ we’re seeing sweeping through the media and marketing industries in the UK and US, and now here in Australia, demand we value, nur- ture, retain, train and develop our talent. Clients want the best talent, stability and consistency — and we as an industry must ensure we are paid fairly to deliver this.
“At the start of the pandemic most agencies completely cancelled or delayed their training and devel- opment programs, and that budget went straight to the bottom line. Recently some have reinstated the programs, albeit in a virtual format, and let’s hope they ramp up further in 2022. I believe face-to-face engagement is much more effective than virtual training, but virtual is better than nothing.
“Another unfortunate impact of not being in the office is that it’s had a dramatic effect on informal training. The stuff you pick up by sitting with or next to your man- ager, overhearing a conversation, receiving random feedback or see- ing your boss model great leader- ship behaviour is not available when you’re working in your spare bedroom or your kitchen table. Not having mentors or coaches in the office environment to guide you can also take its toll.
“For agency leaders, my advice is this: Now is the time to take action, implement new programs and invest back into your most important asset — your people — and make retention your number-one priority.”
Yaron Farizon at MediaCom says the talent squeeze has always been with us.
“There has always been one, and not just here in Australia,” he says. “Is it slightly more exacerbated right now ? Yes, sure. But we have a plan.
“Make difficult decisions early, and then accelerate out hard as the multinational agencies were
still waiting for someone in London or Paris to tell them what to do.”
Jack Watts,
Global CEO, Bastion
“Creating a place where your best talents want to stay, and the best industry talent want to work, is a vision we are committed to as an agency, and as a group. On the back of the last couple of years, people are chang- ing their relationship to work and productivity, and this reflects in how we build our culture and value proposition.
“For example, we have relaunched GroupM’s Graduate program, Launch Pad, and restructured to help bring more talent through in the early years, giving the teams more support and us a bigger talent pool to train and grow. We’ve also built and expanded carefully-crafted initiatives in training, devel- opment, and enjoyment to ensure that we are a place where people can enjoy what they do, feel challenged professionally, yet supported.
“We’re investing in training our teams to become mental health allies for their peers, supporting our people with an array of mental health and wellbeing initiatives. And of course, building a real headway in how the future of hybrid, more flexible ways of working, will look like for our people and clients.
“People are making big decisions to get back control over their lives. Making sure our people are having fun at work, are happy, properly challenged yet supported and fairly rewarded is the core of leaders’ work, every day. And being kind. In the context of 2022, it is about helping our people to be the best versions of themselves, renew their passion and future goals, and really support them in taking more control over their lives.”
Sir Martin Sorrell at S4 Capital: “We have a talent squeeze? They [the global holding companies] were firing people last year. So it's lack of consistency and that's what causes the problem. You've got an oscillation instead of a steady growth bar.”
He says they wouldn't have fired 25,000 to 30,000 people if they were truly worried about their talent .
“You can do the arithmetic, you can look at their numbers,” Sir Martin tells AdNews. “They paid all those people off, threw them out of work, and they've been rehiring them this year at higher rates. Go figure.
“In Australia with BizTech, which is now, a full part of MediaMonks, we took the decision — despite the fact engineers couldn't visit clients because of the lockdowns — that they were in such short supply and the cost of cutting and going back was so great that we would maintain the fabric.
“I think it was short-termism. That's the basic problem with