How should HR deal with churn in an agency?
What happens when managers are thrown into the role without being the right training? Do we place too much emphasis on technical skills? And how do you keep your best talents from getting their head turned by rivals?
To answer all this and more we caught up with Chris Phillips, HR Manager and Partner at Emperor Works.
What are the biggest challenges when it comes to management training within a creative agency?
Creative agencies, similar to media agencies, as well as all corporate comms agencies, are fast paced. Once you factor in the need for constant innovation, best practice, and external campaigns, there’s rarely sufficient time for management training. Even in agencies I’ve seen where they do have the time, it’s not always a priority. This is a big problem.
Most managers are promoted due to their technical skill rather than their ability to be an effective manager. Being a great leader means a high level of coaching, interpersonal skills, and mentorship. But due to the time sensitivity of work, these skills are often underdeveloped and underprioritised in favour of just trying to hit the next deadline. The end result is that managers whose training is put off for “a few weeks” can end up years down the line without any formal instruction or guidance.
What are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve seen for people stepping into management roles without appropriate training?
The impact of employee experience and engagement. Line reports are not often given clear objectives, or enough support and in the long run, this can have some pretty disastrous consequences.
In this post-COVID world, I also see there is a huge need for good mental health practices but generally speaking,managers tend to lack experience in this area. I’ve seen first-hand how this can often mean that employees losing faith in their managers, which creates a cycle of mismanagement that can quickly toxify a workplace’s culture and eventually cripple it.
A lot of untrained leaders don’t feel comfortable having difficult conversations. For example if an employee’s not meeting the required standards during their probationary period. Rather than having an honest conversation, giving regular feedback/training/support, employees can pass probation by default. The employee then goes on to have performance concerns which results in a PIP, and they’re often left feeling shocked because it’s the first time they have received such feedback. Not only is this bad for the business, it’s catastrophic for the employees self-confidence. Again, this can breed a toxic culture which directly impacts the business by increasing turnover.
Employee churn in the agency world is notoriously high. How does HR deal with this at your agency?
To address churn, we really try to focus on the employee value proposition, and what benefits we have that set us apart from our competitors. Emperor became employee-owned back in 2020 as part of that commitment, and this has had a significant impact on keeping people engaged and entrepreneurial.
Furthermore, we have a partner board that reviews ongoing feedback, and regularly communicates actions back to the partners so they feel their voice is heard. There is also a huge focus on sustainability, so we are seen as an agency that’s not solely profit driven, but focuses on wider global issues. For example, we have become a B Corp, carried out a disability and culture audit, and recently we’ve been refocusing our EDI and wellbeing strategy inline with industry trends. This is by no means exhaustive, but it shows our employees we are making positive steps in the right direction.
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