Manage P r o a c t i v e l y

3 stePs for getting ahead of your Marketing, creative & digital staffing needs.As marketing channels continue to proliferate, marketing organizations are relying more on flexible workforce strategies to close the gap between their teams’ capacity and the need to cover the growing requirements of emerging platforms and channels. Specific technical requirements and positions in high demand such as mobile app development place a strain on organizations that are trying to effectively navigate traditional as well as emerging channels. Finding ways to harness a flexible workforce is mission critical for hiring managers in marketing, digital, and creative organizations.

In 2012, Aquent commissioned a survey of 580 marketing, creative and digital hiring managers to uncover flexible workforce trends in their departments.

In this paper, we share the findings of the survey, examine the trends, and provide a three-step process to help you shift toward a proactive approach when it comes to meeting your organization’s workforce requirements.

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the current landscaPeOur survey illuminates several key trends and lessons learned in using a flexible workforce:

• Flexible workforce solutions are a critical part of successful marketing and creative organizations

•Gaps in capacity and technical expertise drive outsourcing

•Many hiring managers react to, instead of plan for, additional staffing needs

•Managers continue to shoulder a large workload

•Proactive workforce management practices pay off

Let’s examine each one more closely.

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flexible workforce solutions are a critical Part of Marketing and creative organizationsNearly two-thirds of marketing and creative teams leverage some form of an external workforce to help meet their marketing objectives (figure 1).

72%IN-HOUSE EMPLOYEES

10%INDEPENDANT CONTRACTORS

8%AD AGENCIES

7%STAFFING FIRM EMPLOYEES

Figure 1: Average organizational allocation of marketing & creative work

Of that external workforce, independent contractors make up the majority with 10%, followed by ad agencies (8%) and staffing firm employees (7%).

2% OutSOurced PrOject teAMS

Note: percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding

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43%STAFF CAPACITY

29%EXPERTISE OR TECHNICAL SKILLS

9%FREE UP INTERNAL STAFF

8%HEADCOUNTFREEZE

6%COST SAVINGS

Figure 2: Reasons for outsourcing marketing & creative work

gaPs in caPacity and technical exPertise drive outsourcingMore than 70% of hiring managers look to external resources when addressing challenges with staff capacity or specific technical skills or knowledge (figure 2).

Other reasons for out-sourcing creative work include the desire to free up internal resources for other projects (9%), to address issues related to hiring freezes within the organization (8%), and for cost savings (6%).

3% FILL-IN FOr AbSeNceS

3% try beFOre buyING

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58%

19%

14%

9%

0% 35% 70%

ONLY ADD STAFF IF WORKLOAD GETS EXCESSIVE/NEED ADDITIONAL EXPERTISE

STAFF UP BEFORE PROJECT

DOESN’T STAFFUP REGARDLESS

STAFF UP TO MEET DEADLINE

Figure 3: Typical approach to staffing a new project

reasons for a reactive approach vary, with the most likely scenarios including the fact that urgent and important projects tend to take the energy away from strategic efforts. Also, the use of flexible workforce solutions is still a new business approach, and hiring managers tend to think in terms of adding internal staff rather than identifying ways to harness the power of a flexible internal/external solution.

Many hiring Managers react to, instead of Plan for, additional staffing needsthe findings show that nearly 6 out of 10 managers are reactive in their approach to staffing needs, meaning they only hire temporary workers when workloads become excessive or they lack expertise in a given area (figure 3). Only about 3 in 10 manag-ers are proactive, hiring prior to the start of a project (19%) or staffing up to meet a launch date or deadline (9%).

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Managers continue to shoulder a large workloadthe survey revealed that the number of hours in a typical workweek continues to increase--more managers are working between 41 to 50 hours per week. unfortunately, managers who both believe their work life is extremely stressful and who strongly agree that they lack necessary resources to accomplish their goals are significantly more likely to work 51 hours or more per week.

Proactive workforce ManageMent Practices Pay offthe research also highlighted that being proactive pays. Nearly half of the managers (47%) who are proactive in addressing their staffing needs say their last hire was an excellent skills match, which is significantly higher than the managers who are reactive (37%) or those who do not staff up at all (37%). Additionally, managers who say their work lives are not extremely stressful are significantly more likely to staff up prior to the start of a project compared to those who find their work stressful.

stePs for Proactive ManageMentultimately, the survey data highlights that a reactive approach to staffing and recruiting a contingent workforce can affect both the manager’s stress level and the team’s overall ability to reach business goals. However, there are steps managers can take to be more proactive in their recruiting and hiring approach. In the following pages, we explore these three steps for becoming a more proactive marketing and creative hiring manager:

1. Anticipate how your annual plan can (and will) change

2. continually evaluate your current team’s performance and skills

3. Always recruit, even if you don’t have an open position

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Figure 4: Jobs that are currently in demand

Mobile App Developers

User Experience Designer

Interaction/UI Designer

Front End Developers

Information Architect

Interactive Project Managers

7.6

6.8

6.8

6.7

6.6

6.5

10-point scale: 0-Extremely low demand, 10-Extremely high demand

0% 50% 100%

Low Demand (0-6) High Demand (7, 8) Extremely High Demand (9, 10)

AverageRating

23% 34% 43%

40% 37% 24%

37% 39% 23%

39% 38% 23%

44% 34% 23%

46% 36% 18%

Step 1anticiPate how your annual Plan can (and will) changeIt’s likely that you spend a significant amount of time crafting your quarterly and annual plans. With your strategy carefully laid out and support tactics, budgets, and resources clear, the path to execution appears straightforward. However, no matter how hard you work to stick to it, circumstances beyond your control can cause you to veer off course, leaving you scrambling for the appropriate resources.

the proliferation of media for mobile devices is the perfect example—this is the hottest channel for marketers to master. the dynamics of this channel illustrate how marketing and creative departments have been forced to quickly adapt to new technology, and, as a result, revise their most carefully laid plans and strategies. the device platform, development tools, distribution strategies, and content all play critical roles, and organizations have had to adjust quickly to master them.

More than 40% of the hiring managers we surveyed indicated that mobile app developers are in extremely high demand (Figure 4). the majority of those managers depend on external resources to fill these positions. roughly one in four turn to either boutique or full-service agencies (28%) or independent contractors (24%), and roughly equal percentages utilize outsourced project teams (15%) or staffing firm employees (14%) to fill the need.

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Given the rapid rate of change in today’s business climate, it may not be feasible to predict everything that might force you to leverage an external flexible workforce. However, you may be able to better embrace the constant flux that’s now the norm by asking the following questions:

1. What new technologies or communications vehicles might require you to augment your existing team’s skill set?

2. What do you know about your customers and competition that might require you to get a new product to market faster?

3. If your industry is highly regulated, are there any new legal mandates forthcoming that might require you to change your product strategy and messaging?

4. What are your recurring big-ticket projects? do they overlap?

5. What percentage of your recurring projects do you outsource and why?

6. What percentage of the work completed last year was unexpected?

7. What percentage of the unexpected work did you outsource?

8. When you did outsource the work, what were the costs?

9. do you have headcount for more permanent employees? If yes, is there any value in keeping those roles as contract positions?

Anticipating what might change over the course of a year will help you become more proactive by understanding what external resources you might need and when. More important, this knowledge will allow you to seek out relationships with external partners that can help you be adaptable and staffed appropriately for any unexpected shifts in the market.

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Step 2continually evaluate your existing teaM’s PerforMance and skillsWith the evolution of technical platforms and the emergence of new channels, you need to continually evaluate your team in terms of alignment with current and future work. this exercise puts you in a proactive mindset as new work comes into your organization.

Anticipating and developing new skills within your team is ideal. If you can’t send your team out for training, it might be good idea to bring in an expert for a limited engagement. they can work alongside your permanent employees and inject some much-needed knowledge of a new technology.

Another way to approach a self-assessment of your team is to slice up your project work by the skillsets required and the level complexity of the work, rather than by project, product line, or organizational structure. Many organizations employ decoupling initiatives where strategic work is separated from tactical work and handled by different people. For example, the core team performs work that is highly visible and original (strategic), while production and iterative (tactical) tasks are performed by more junior team members or by external resources. And perhaps one-time strategic initiatives go to an external resource because the technical skill sets are too specialized for your team to adopt without putting other priorities at risk.

Many organizations employ decoupling initiatives where strategic work is separated from tactical work and handled by different people.

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Here are some questions to ask as you evaluate your team:

1. How consistent are your team’s job descriptions with the actual day-to-day work?

2. What are their strengths?

3. What are their weaknesses?

4. How much time do they spend working on things that are outside of their skill sets?

5. Are you asking some of your team members to do production work in addition to the highly strategic and original creation?

6. do you have simpler, tactical work that could be handed off to newer team members or external resources to free up your core team?

7. What’s your gut feeling about how happy your team is?

8. Has your team taken time to pursue professional development opportunities?

9. What does your team need to look like in five years? In two years? In six months? What is the gap and how can you move your team in that direction?

10. Are there specific technical skills that you need your team to develop or that you need to acquire from outside?

11. designers and writers often need to cross the boundaries into coding... Is your team learning the latest technical skills that they need to develop for emerging platforms?

However you approach this exercise, ultimately you want to achieve an understanding of your current situation, as it relates to what your future needs will be. this puts you in a more empowered and proactive position when it comes to making staffing decisions.

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Step 3always recruit, even if you don’t have an oPen PositionAs our survey indicated, 58% of managers expand their team only when the workload becomes excessive or when additional expertise is needed. Other situations might include long-term employee absences, unexpected departures, or seasonal spikes in workload. Knowing that these situations will most likely arise in your organization, you can increase your launch speed by having a pool of pre-qualified resources.

the challenge here is the time required. Given everything marketing and creative leaders must juggle on a daily basis, building and managing an active pipeline of talent can be a daunting task. continuously sourcing candidates, particularly for in-demand positions such as Mobile App developers, user experience designers, and Interaction designers/uI can be particularly time consuming. Maintaining relation-ships with active and passive job seekers on your own is a full-time job in itself. Knowing when a great candidate is available, or is about to become available, is key.

Aquent’s Heads up mobile app and MyAquent portal allow talent in our network to update our recruiters immediately when they are available to work for our clients.

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regardless of what process you have in place for hiring contingent resources, it is important that you assess that process by asking the following questions:

1. Who was the best source of candidates for your most recent opening?

2. How many applicants did you receive?

3. did you feel like you received a significant number of qualified candidates?

4. When you consider the skills gap of your team, did you see those skills in the candidates?

5. did you feel your Hr department was fully involved in the recruiting process?

6. How many resumes did you receive for your most recent opening?

7. How many people did you interview for a single opening?

8. did you review their portfolio, their wireframes, or their code?

9. did you assess their skills on specific software applications?

10. How long did it take from job posting to actual start date?

11. Would you consider your last hire a successful hire? If not, why not?

12. Would you consider your hiring and onboarding process efficient?

When you add all of the hours spent finding temporary candidates, reviewing resumes, and interviewing and onboarding new employees… how much time did it take? For contingent positions in particular, your answer should be in days or weeks, not months.

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conclusionMarketing and creative teams are being stretched in terms of their workload capacity and skills with emerging technology. As a hiring manager, you need to determine how best to balance the work between internal and external resources and find ways to either build capacity and technical expertise within your team, or acquire it from external resources.

based on our survey, your organization is likely to use some combination of internal and external resources to complete marketing and creative projects. Additionally, you are likely to see projects come up too quickly for the organization to respond fast enough to relieve the pressure. the reactive nature of these situations can lead to additional stress for you and your team. this is where these proactive steps come in: anticipate, evaluate, and recruit. Anticipate your future project needs, evaluate your team and identify the gaps in capacity and skill set, and continuously seek future team members who can help you move your team forward. your internal and external partners can help with these evaluation tasks as you come up with the solution to get ahead of your staffing needs.

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Marketing and creative workforce trends survey inforMationthis survey was conducted online by Inavero on behalf of Aquent, and included 580 responses from marketing, creative, and digital professionals. It spans a variety of industries and organization sizes across the u.S., providing commentary from industry professionals on how their marketing, creative, and interactive teams manage their marketing, digital, and creative needs. More than half of all respondents worked for companies with a global reach, and one third reported leveraging marketing resources outside of the u.S.

the survey took place in june and july, 2012. respondents included marketing, creative, and digital professionals on lists provided by Aquent as well as respondents from an independent online panel of marketing leaders. With a pure probability sample of 580, one could say with 95% confidence that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 4.1% points. the sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.

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about aquentAquent is the only global staffing company dedicated to marketing and creative services exclusively for Fortune 1000 companies. the world’s most renowned global brands come to Aquent for high-caliber freelance talent. Its division, Vitamin t, provides mid-sized and ad agency clients with faster, easier access to in-demand interactive talent. Aquent and Vitamin t have built an impressive network of more than 400,000 marketing and creative services professionals, including print and interactive designers, uX designers and developers, copywriters, content strategies, branders, managers, market researchers and more.

to learn more about Aquent, visit aquent.com or call 855.767.6333.

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Anticipate how your annual plan can (and will) change 1. What new technologies or communications

vehicles might require you to augment your existing team’s skill set?

2. What do you know about your customers and competition that might require you to get a new product to market faster?

3. If your industry is highly regulated, are there any new legal mandates forthcoming that might require you to change your product strategy and messaging?

4. What are your recurring big-ticket projects? do they overlap?

5. What percentage of your recurring projects do you outsource and why?

6. What percentage of the work completed last year was unexpected?

7. What percentage of the unexpected work did you outsource?

8. When you did outsource the work, what were the costs?

9. do you have headcount for more permanent employees? If yes, is there any value in keeping those roles as contract positions?

Continually evaluate your current team’s performance and skills10. How consistent are your team’s job descriptions

with the actual day-to-day work?

11. What are their strengths?

12. What are their weaknesses?

13. How much time do they spend working on

things that are outside of their skill sets?

14. Are you asking some of your team members to do production work in addition to the highly strategic and original creation?

15. do you have simpler, tactical work that could be handed off to newer team members or external resources to free up your core team?

16. What’s your gut feeling about how happy your team is?

17. Has your team taken time to pursue professional development opportunities?

18. What does your team need to look like in five years? In two years? In six months? What is the gap and how can you move your team in that direction?

19. Are there specific technical skills that you

need your team to develop or that you need to acquire from outside?

20. designers and writers often need to cross the boundaries into coding... Is your team learning the latest technical skills that they need to develop for emerging platforms?

your Path to Proactivity starts with these questions...

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Always recruit, even if you don’t have an open position21. Who was the best source of candidates for your most

recent opening?

22. How many applicants did you receive?

23. did you feel like you received a significant number of qualified candidates?

24. When you consider the skills gap of your team, did you see those skills in the candidates?

25. did you feel your Hr department was fully involved in the recruiting process?

26. How many resumes did you receive for your most recent opening?

27. How many people did you interview for a single opening?

28. did you review their portfolio, their wireframes, or their code?

29. did you assess their skills on specific software applications?

30. How long did it take from job posting to actual start date?

31. Would you consider your last hire a successful hire? If not, why not?

32. Would you consider your hiring and onboarding process efficient?