Stay in touch
One of Eiserman’s sayings is that you have to genuinely value
your employees or else you might as well go get new ones.
Occasionally, some staff members of his team will work 70- to 80-hour weeks. It’s during those long hours, and those many dinners
around the old boardroom table, that having a good company culture pays off.
“If someone is going to work every night until 10 p.m. and be here
on the weekends, then this is not only their job, it’s their social life,
as well,” Eiserman says.
“So, it’s got to be a place that they like to be. That culture often
has to be able to sustain a competitive offer from the agency down
the road or a crazy workload for someone who hasn’t had a day off
in three or four weeks.”
The task of keeping quality employees becomes even more difficult when it requires paying double the going rate just to get the
right employees in the door.
The shortage of quality employees with the right skill set changes
the way Eiserman plans the vision for his organization.
“When we’re setting a vision for the company, it’s not only, ‘Here’s
what we think will give us solid business performance for the next
few years,’” he says. “We also have to wrap that vision in something that will attract people to the organization so that they will
say, ‘Of the 10,000 agencies out there, this is the one I want to be a
part of.’ Because at the end of the day, all we have is our talent.”
One reason that employees want to stick around at Y&R Brands
is the agency takes more than a passing interest in their development. Eiserman says if you are in over your head at your current
position, you won’t be for long. If you’re not sufficiently challenged
by your current job responsibilities, that will be fixed, too.
Although every employee has a core skill set, management can
develop a deeper understanding of a staff member’s capabilities as
his or her skills evolve. So Eiserman devotes resources to readjusting the agency’s knowledge of its staff’s capabilities. By making
sure each employee is well-suited and happy in his or her role, you
can maximize productivity and improve retention.
“The financial pressures in an agency environment are extreme,
especially in an agency that is publicly owned,” he says. “So you
really need to maximize the work capacity and the potential of literally every employee that you have.”