New Future of Work report produced by IPA in association with Working Families

The future of work: the challenges for adland in 2020

Ad agencies need to adapt to a changing world of work to ensure it continues to attract the right talent. With an ageing workforce, different attitudes amongst new recruits (Gen Y), and technological advances, management should look at new ways of working to retain their people. This is according to The Future of Work, a new report to be published by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (Monday 6th September 2010), in association with Working Families the leading work-life balance charity.

Discussing with employees how they want work to work, letting them have a say in what hours and days they want to work, looking at working patterns to provide clients with 24/7 service, ‘virtual working’ and redesigning the client-agency contract are just some of the measures the report suggests.

Based on workshops and roundtables with 150 people across the industry including clients, agency CEOS, HR Directors, new recruits (Gen Y), and middle managers (Gen X), The Future of Work is the fourth in a series of IPA reports on workplace issues produced over three decades.

The report suggests ten ways to reshape the agency business:

1. More proactive talent management: HR Directors should take the initiative with staff, by acknowledging and developing them as they go through various life stages, giving them scope to change so that they continue to be effective.

2. Locking in Generation Y: a structured approach to meeting the expectations of how this generation wants to work, identifying ‘rising stars’.

3. Being more flexible with flexible working: give everyone, including men, the opportunity to say what hours and days they would work to fulfil their workload.

4. Articulating the value of a motivated workforce in terms that clients would recognise: e.g staff motivation forming part of agency appraisal.

5. Finding different ways of working: e.g pricing differently according to work type, greater collaboration between agencies.

6. Work as an activity, not a destination: enabled by advances in technology e.g virtual working, fewer offices.

7. Proactive 24/7 service: e.g shift working, or virtual shift working by pairing up offices around the globe.

8. The re-emergence of the ‘senior suit’ to management of client-agency relationships, and a way to keep older experienced employees on in a specialist ‘sideways’ role at a renegotiated salary.

9. The rise of opportunity networks: agencies could package their services in different ways to respond to individual client contracts, offer different organisational models, offer a talent network made up of freelancers etc

10. Re-design of the client/agency contract: reorganise agency functions in servicing clients to accurately reflect the cost, clients creating a work contract for multiple agencies.

Says Liz Nottingham, Chair IPA People Management Group, HR Director, Starcom MediaVest Group and Country Talent and Transformation Officer, Vivaki:   “Adland cannot be transformed over night, but with these findings we have the opportunity to start the journey now by offering step changes that can make a real difference to the workplace going forwards, by listening to the needs of Gen Y; the idealistic tech-savvy generation who are the managers of the future. Getting the workplace right matters to all of us, and the challenge to management is to balance client pressures with the priorities of the people who work for them.”

Says Sarah Jackson, OBE, CEO, Working Families:  “This report presents an opportunity for agencies to think about how they deliver work from scratch. The key issue and starting point must be: how do we deliver for the client, meet our own business goals and meet the desire from within for better work-life integration in a way that enhances our business?”

The Future of Work report can be purchased free for IPA members and £50 for non-members by contacting the IPA.

Ends

Note to editors:

The Future of Work is the fourth in a series of IPA reports on workplace issues, produced over three decades.
The first report, from Marilyn Baxter, then Vice Chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi, and published in 1990, focused on the lack of female representation in senior positions in agencies.
The second report, from Debbie Klein, then CEO of WCRS, and published in the year 2000, sought to update the 1990 report statistics but found new issues relating to work life balance and female representation in creative departments.
The third report, from Niall Hadden of WCRS was published in 2003 as part of research undertaken on flexible working for the IPA HR Conference that year. In this review, Hadden was highly critical of agency employment practices and their failure to use more flexible approaches and calculated that the agency ‘hire and fire’ resourcing model had on average cost a large agency £2.5 million over a two-year period (2001-2002).
In this study for 2010, the IPA has chosen to build on Hadden’s work and to see whether in seven years there has been a greater adoption of more flexible working practices, especially as a result of the severe recession and changes brought about by the new digital media.

Other talent initiatives
Diagonal Thinking
Diagonal Thinking is the special ability to be both a linear and lateral thinker which only ten per cent of the population has. The unique Self-Assessment to identify this ability was launched by the IPA in September 2008, designed as a recruitment tool to encourage applicants from all backgrounds to consider a career in advertising. The culmination of a five-year project from the IPA, the Diagonal Thinking tool validates the hypothesis that to get to the top in advertising you must be able to think ‘diagonally’. www.diagonalthinking.co.uk

Top tips on retaining talent in tough times
The IPA People Management Group produced an e-booklet on ten top tips to help agencies to retain and motivate their staff during the recession www.ipa.co.uk/DisplayContent.aspx?id=6071

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) is the trade body and professional institute for UK advertising, media and marketing communications agencies. It was established in 1917 as a servicing body and to negotiate on behalf of its members with media bodies, government departments and unions. Its 274 corporate members handle over 80% of the UK’s advertising agency business which has an estimated value (excluding press and TV production) of £17.7 billion.

Issued by:
IPA Press Office tel: 020 7201 8261