Are you a conscious leader?
As the advertising and marketing industry struggles to address the issue of rocketing rates of staff churn in their businesses, Slingshot CEO Simon Rutherford argues that today’s ‘conscious leaders’ should be more focussed on creating ‘staff wellness’ in order to deliver high performing teams and healthy profits.
A conscious leader believes the business has a greater responsibility towards the community it operates in. To ensure sustainable long-term profits, people must come first. Awareness, trust, authenticity, transparency, 100% responsibility, connection, compassion, and love: these are the tools of the conscious leader.
I think it’s fair to say that we all agree that something needs to be done about the high levels of staff turnover in the advertising and marketing industries. The average for media agencies alone is 30 per cent based on recent statistics, a scary figure for any leader.
Nicely said Simon. Anything I can do to help let me know. Cheers Sinkers
I think this is such a well overdue topic, Simon. I see that clients are very supportive of training their people in these ‘soft skills’ and in many ways the clients are out-doing the agencies now. I’ve always said that the agency game is won in the mind – particularly when the offerings are all pretty much the same, only different and this gets it out of a price war.
After hearing about the well known CD that has sued for unfair dismissal (and winning) we can see how the HR process is handled in many businesses in this industry, only these guys got caught out. I appreciate that someone like you can be heard on this topic and trust that agencies start to value these skills more. Of course there are some that are fantastic.
People first. Staff are what matter. Seriously there’s no new news here, except that now it’s being marketed. Advertising is still a vicious, self-obsessed and sychophantic industry. Those with the brownest noses succeed. It must be the fertilizer.
i’ve worked for a lot of CDs, some of which are doing the talk circuit going on about conscious advertising. Great. But it’s been mere lip-service. They’ve talked the talk but completely walked the other way.
If their conscience can deal with their blatant hypocrisy all well and good, but to make out that they’re the new messiahs of advertising…well.
Well said Simon, and hoping many more leaders are agreeing with your comments too.
Good, solid thoughts Ruthers
Too many companies view their staff as a short term commodity and the creative industry in particular can often base its hiring and firing strategy on their clients activity instead of taking a future thinking, more strategic view of their staff.
The larger group organisations such as WPP and STW have the perfect opportunity to implement brilliant reforms in the redeployment, promotion and flexible staffing policies of their members, but lack the centralised decision-making power to enforce it. The results are that companies are paying way too much in recruitment fees.
Funny, you may think that a recruiter stands so solidly behind any reform to improve staff retention – but it certainly does not create a healthy industry environment when there is so much churn. It is in no one’s interest. We should all be supporting trainee schemes, SImon’s wellness initiatives, training and development programmes and good old fashioned strong mentoring and leadership, because these create healthy environments and make people happy and loyal.
Staff wellness should be at the very core of any good HR Employment Brand policy so perhaps we should create a new position title. Staff Wellness Officer!
For more on this issues see our blog http://bit.ly/10xsVIw
A topic that needs to be spoken about more – thanks Simon. Just booked a ticket to the conference on Wednesday, looking forward to it!
Well said Ruthers. Surly the asset of an agency is its staff. Investing in these will deliver your best ROI.
Two things you will always see in a company’s annual report:
1. Our staff are our greatest asset.
2. This is printed on recycled paper.