VIEWPOINT: Belated agency move to remedy HR oversight will pay dividends

Considering that an average ad agency network in Asia has a myriad of roles and hierarchies and operates in a cross-cultural field, it will come as a surprise to many outside the industry that an HR position isn't one of them. Only now - decades after other service industries like finance, banking, and technology - has the advertising sector awoken to the urgent need to take a pro-active approach in managing HR. Which is why we now have a spate of HR hires (see page 31), although Ogilvy and Burnett have been a lot quicker off the mark. In the former's case, by at least a decade earlier. How this glaring oversight is only now being plugged beggars belief. Time and time again, we have heard that it's staff who make the difference between being at the top or bottom of the agency heap. Yet, at this fundamental level of their operations, the majority of agencies here have been sorely negligent. Naturally this has made their talent pool particularly vulnerable to poaching by clients, and, most memorably by the once staff-hungry dotcom firms. For agencies nursing a high staff turnover, it must take an incredible amount of chutzpah to turn around and service a client, who has managed to recruit and retain some of the best and brightest advertising-trained talent to its team. Yet this is the uncomfortable scenario agencies are likely to face time and again - at least until they can turn this into a two-way talent flow. By the look of things, we are probably years away from seeing this happen. Indeed, reflecting the absence of an HR tradition in the industry, agencies have been forced to look outside the business for suitable candidates. Not that that is a bad thing. A fresh perspective should go a long way to - first whip agencies out of their complacency - then help them focus laser-like on an issue which will ultimately decide their very future. Perhaps, more than the West, HR presents a far bigger challenge to agencies operating in Asia. Asia's cultural diversity does present an HR minefield for any agency with multi-market operations. Which makes a regional HR role crucial in today's agency set-up in introducing best practices as well as consistency to how an agency recruits talent, evaluates, compensates, trains, prepares a rewarding career path and ultimately retains human capital. By becoming an employer of choice, a network will happily discover that the biggest dividend of a carefully-crafted HR policy is that clients will also begin to view it as the agency of choice.

Sign In

Trouble signing in?

Reset Password: Click here

Contact Customer Support at

Customerservice@campaignasia.com