We Can Do Better…Together

A version of this post was distributed to attendees of the 4A’s Talent@2030 conference, held in New York City on August 11‒12, 2014.

Three years ago, at the 4A’s Transformation conference in Austin, Arnold Worldwide released the results of an industrywide talent survey it had conducted in partnership with the 4A’s. The findings were accurately described as “bleak.”

Among the lowlights:

• 30% of industry employees said they’d be gone in 12 months
• Half intended to leave their current employers because they felt undertrained with no clear career path
• Virtually no one was encouraging friends to join the industry

John Wren voiced his concern that “no one wakes up in the morning and says they want to go work in the advertising business.” Martin Sorrell was even blunter, labeling advertising’s talent crisis as “criminal.”

We identified five steps every agency needed to take right away: create more university partnerships, promote cross-training between and within agencies, introduce new incentives, fix performance management, and engage employees in the conversation. I finished my 2011 talk with a plea:

“This is a major, major issue and it will take everyone in the room—times 10, times 100—to fix the problem. We need a commitment from the industry and our agencies.”

So, how do things look a little over three years down the road? Not great, but the existence of Talent@2030, the first comprehensive talent leadership conference for advertising, media, and communications executives, is a promising sign that how agencies treat their people is finally beginning to be addressed in a meaningful way. It’s certainly been a major focus at Havas these past couple of years, and—while we still have a huge distance to cover—I can share with you a handful of important lessons we’ve learned in these early stages.

Deliver meaningful action: Like many organizations, we had conducted internal employee surveys in the past, but they mostly were about gauging levels of satisfaction and determining how well individual departments were delivering. If we wanted to find out what our people really were thinking and experiencing in their jobs—and identify specific actions to improve levels of engagement—we needed to dig a lot deeper. And so we made the decision to partner with Kenexa (now IBM Smarter Workforce) to conduct a detailed engagement survey across our entire network. This was a major undertaking—and a lot of what we learned was truly humbling—but it was worth it to get the hard data and tangible evidence of what was working and, more important, where we were falling short.

The most important component: Once the survey findings were analyzed, the results were shared with each agency, and its leaders were required to develop an action plan outlining the steps they would take to make things better. Actions taken range from a greatly simplified performance review process and better network communications tools to fun and inspired senior leadership employee breakfasts. We are making progress and are committed to continuing to listen to and leverage the “voice of the employee” to drive higher levels of engagement across the globe.

Bring people together: We can talk all we want about the benefits of collaboration, unity, and cross-pollination, but it’s nearly impossible to achieve until you sit people down under the same roof. And so we decided to fix that by bringing together our business, creative, and media teams on centralized campuses in our hub cities. We’ve already created 19 of these Havas Villages around the globe—from Paris to New York, Denmark to Dubai—and we’re in the process of constructing three more this year. Each of these spaces has been designed with the latest technologies and in configurations that make it hard not to collaborate.

Not every agency is in a position to overhaul its physical configuration to the degree we have, but the lesson here is really about figuring out ways to improve the communications flow and create unavoidable opportunities for collaboration. The creative process, as we all know, demands the free flow of ideas, and it’s important that we continually work to improve access—to others within our network, to clients, to outside influences. It makes for better work—and it makes us all happier.

Grow leaders: One of the great frustrations expressed by people in our industry is poor management, ranging from absent to overbearing. Too many people are promoted into management positions with zero training in how to lead a team. So we’ve made it a priority to ensure that tomorrow’s leaders are being identified and given a solid grounding today. We are in the process of developing our Next Gen Leadership program, a joint project of Havas Creative Group and Havas Media Group. Talent specialists within the two groups got together and asked what our rising stars truly needed to become strong and insightful leaders. The result: the creation of an 18-month program that includes three weeklong training modules in Europe, North America, and Asia. The modules will focus on leadership, driving innovation, emerging technologies, and consumer behavior. Participants will engage in project work between and after sessions to fine-tune their new skills, develop deeper relationships across the network, and gain a better understanding of the career pathways available to them within Havas.

Give people global exposure: The best way for people to understand a large, global company is to attach them to a variety of offices and regions so they can see for themselves what colleagues in other countries and functions are doing. Unfortunately, long-term assignments overseas can be a logistical nightmare, and the potential upheaval causes some highly qualified people—especially those with families—to take themselves out of the running. We’re working to solve this with our Mobility@Havas Lofts initiative, which is experimenting with ways to get more people more learning experiences in more places in less time. First up will be our Havas Lofts training program, starting this fall, which will let high-potential, high-skilled talent from around the world spend three to four weeks in intensive immersions within one of our offices in London, Paris, or New York.

So many of our people want to explore the world and accumulate new life experiences—which can only benefit our work as an agency. Why not make it as easy as possible?

Treat people like…people: That’s a shocking thought, I know, but we all need to recognize how easy it is to focus on the employee while overlooking the individual. Our people-centered approach manifests itself in ways small and big, but it seems to me that it mostly comes down to these two things: being flexible about working styles and doing what we can to ease the tensions between work and “life.” We all know how hectic our lives can be, so we’re always looking for ways to make things easier. On our New York campus, for instance, we’ve introduced things like healthy lunch options (a different vendor each day) and mobile massage therapists and manicurists.

It’s also important to temper the stress and long hours that are endemic to our industry with plenty of downtime and support. So we’re currently fielding three softball teams in New York, enjoying weekly happy hours, and we tack on an extra day to a long weekend or holiday as often as we can. In our London agency, the entire staff took part in a four-week training program in positive psychology as part of an effort to make the work atmosphere healthier and more productive. And this year’s World Cup proved an especially good opportunity for a global company to inject some fun—and friendly competition—into our workdays. More than 1,000 employees contributed thoughts, photos, and videos to our #havasworldcup tagboard, and a number of our offices held viewing parties during key matches. Take a look at the video.

Take chances: The talent initiatives outlined here are a work in progress. Some will become entrenched in our agency culture. Some likely will morph into something quite different as we learn from trial and error. And others may fall by the wayside because of lack of success or interest. What’s important is to keep your talent practice constantly evolving. Don’t give up because an initiative falls flat. Don’t limit yourself to what others have tried. Do recruit ambassadors to oversee and report on talent initiatives within every office or market. And, if you don’t already have the full support and participation of the C-suite, make that your number-one priority.

A Call to Action

The talent crisis within our industry affects every one of us. We all need to face this simple truth: If we want to get the most brilliant and creative people to sign on with us—and stay with us—we need to create workplaces in which they want to be every day. And we need to find ways to help our people grow and remain excited and challenged by the work for the duration of their careers.

Let’s all get better about working together to fix this collective problem. I’ve shared with you a few things we’re doing at Havas. I know we’d all love to hear what everyone else is up to. Let’s continue the conversation on Twitter using #4AsTalent.

Here’s to our bright future.