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.
