Inefficiency is one of the biggest enemies of scaled growth. More often, we see process-heavy agencies frustrated by errors, inconsistencies or subpar results, which erode clients’ trust and damage the agency’s reputation. Burnout affects individual employees and negatively impacts team dynamics, collaboration and overall morale.Ĭlients notice when employees are rushing to meet deadlines or focused on process instead of work quality.
Frustration at the ever-increasing workload builds until your best people burn out or ‘ quiet quit’. Lack of clarity, excessive administration and poor time management hamper employees’ ability to work efficiently. Increasing billable hours is merely a Band-Aid fix for productivity issues, not a sustainable solution. Inefficiency directly translates to increased costs that can’t always be recovered. The cost of re-work, overtime and wasted hours quickly adds up, eroding an agency’s thin margin. To implement a solution, you need to know where the cracks first appear. The answer often resides in streamlining workflows or improving collaboration. These delays have a cascading effect on other projects, diverting resources and creating a backlog that compounds inefficiency. When tasks take longer than they should, the overall project timeline slips. Here’s what some of those red flags look like. Our research found that companies with no productivity tracking tools reported more chalenges monitoring employee performance metrics, which means issues only become visible when their impact spills over into team performance, project delivery or client satisfaction. Growing the ratio of billable hours vs non-billable hours (without compromising quality) has always been the agency challenge.īut while agency leaders might be frustrated with low outputs or slow growth, the causes of declining profits run deeper.Īs agencies of all kinds face disruption and embrace remote work – creative, advertising, design, marketing, media, PR and staffing agencies alike – managing employee productivity without the right tools can become a game of whack-a-mole. You may recognize this employee productivity paradox as a rise in staff hours without an equivalent revenue increase, a breakdown in team collaboration, rising numbers of client complaints or lost accounts, or a decline in billable vs non-billable hours.īut which processes are holding us back? Where can we optimize efficiency, and how do we ensure the underlying gaps are sewn shut? Learning to find red flags: The signs your agency might have productivity issues Part of the problem, according to McKinsey, is the “micropatterns” that see people working longer hours without adding equivalent value. Just a few years ago, it was hovering just above the historically low levels seen at the tail-end of WWII. Research from McKinsey found that productivity has been declining since the 1960s.
Do we have a productivity crisis on our hands? The only way to pull your agency out of the productivity rut is to trace time these issues back to their source.īased on the massive amount of employee productivity data we have and our experience working with agencies around the world, we’ve developed this step-by-step guide to using organizational data to root out and rectify productivity gaps that could be holding your agency back. New employees quickly get stuck in the same pitfalls.
Hiring more people won’t solve the problem. Process should help agencies scale, not become a straitjacket that belabours daily tasks and prevents knowledge sharing.Īgencies that get stuck in the “time-wasting rut” of redundant procedures, information siloes and excessive paperwork find it hard to scale as too many of their limited resources are overstretched already.
They’re the scaffolding holding the structure in place.īut too many agencies mistake scaffolding for structure, becoming overburdened with procedure at the expense of productivity, creativity and collaboration. Processes and systems are essential for growing an agency. 79 Don’t let your agency fall victim to the silent time trap
0 kommentar(er)
