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MOST RECENT

Human Resources

Four Essentials for Better Agency Management

Beth James
10/18/2023

We’ve written a lot about finding the right people to fuel creativity in your agency, and working with those people to ensure they have all of the skills, tools ...

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Testing Copywriters Before You Hire

Second Wind
8/11/2023

An important step in the hiring process is testing. This is especially true for design and copywriting positions. Many a creative has been hired by on the basis of a ...

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A Stake Is at the Heart of It

Second Wind
6/5/2023

One of the best things we’ve seen at smaller agencies in recent years is the advent of stakeholder programs. These programs engage key agency employees who are not currently ...

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A Culture of Learning Keeps Your Agency On the Forward Edge

Second Wind
4/4/2023

Looking back over the past decade, the advance of technology and changing face of media has been astounding. And as marketers, the speed at which we as an industry have ...

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Preparing the Offer: New Hire Salary Negotiations

Second Wind
3/21/2023

Crunch time! You have been through the laborious process of recruiting, interviewing and selecting a new hire. Now you need to make that all-important offer. Many agency principals treat this ...

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Why Are Employees Failing to Perform?

Deborah Budd
2/28/2023

Managing people can be the most difficult part of owning a small agency. Most agency owners are not trained in human resources management, and far too few understand the legalities ...

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The Best Employee Incentive Is Purpose

Deborah Budd
2/21/2023

Using monetary incentives to motivate employee productivity or increase performance is a tried and true practice. The question is, how effective are monetary rewards?

Incentives in Ad Agencies

Agency principals ...

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Full Circle – To 360 or Not to 360?

Second Wind
2/14/2023

Employee reviews are a huge headache for most smaller agency owners. Yet, employees expect them; and they can be useful tools for giving feedback and direction to your staff. They ...

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Trust Your People

Second Wind
1/11/2023

A number of years ago, there was a very interesting article in the New Yorker. The article reported that when you are a contestant on the game show, “Who Wants ...

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Can’t See the Trees for the Forest?

Second Wind
1/5/2023

No matter how you attract, recruit, or stumble upon a potential new hire, the real trick is learning to know one when you see one. Here are some points to ...

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Healthy Turnover Rate

What is a “Healthy” Employee Turnover Rate?

Second Wind
11/2/2022

With the unemployment rate at 3.7 percent, and the labor force participation rate at 62.9 percent, businesses are finding it challenging to recruit good employees. Competition for the ...

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New Employee Training and Orientation Builds Agency Success

Second Wind
7/26/2022

Recruiting, interviewing and hiring is a big investment for your agency. Doesn’t it justify a good orientation process to ensure that each new hire succeeds? Even if (especially if ...

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Hire and Hire: How Do You Navigate a Candidate’s Market?

Jack Henke
6/16/2022

We’ve never been here before. Over the history of our country, whenever there has been an employment crisis, it’s been from the employer’s point of view. This ...

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Benefits of Employee Testing

The Benefits of Employee Testing

Jeremy Mullen
8/31/2021

To properly value your workforce, you need strong insight into your employees. Understanding what a person knows; how quickly s/he can learn new information; how likely the person will ...

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Instead of Engagement, Focus on Trust, Purpose and Heart

Deborah Budd
7/14/2021

Engagement.It’s a word we throw around like it actually means something. Too often, we use it to describe how we like to imagine consumers interacting with our advertising ...

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Be a Mentor, Not a Boss: Welcoming Younger Workers to the Agency

Deborah Budd
6/21/2021

Countless articles discuss coaching and mentoring, work attitudes and differing expectations related to Millennials versus older workers. This aspect of the hiring process is often given short shrift in a ...

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The ROI of Trust: The HR Benefits of High-Trust Organizations

Deborah Budd
5/17/2021

As you set your advertising agency’s culture goals, it’s important to understand how the leader influences employees’ attitudes and enthusiasm for the work, serving clients and collaborating with ...

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Building an Organization That Helps Employees Stay—and Lead

Deborah Budd
5/12/2021

Unhappy employees either quit and leave, or they quit and stay. Disengaged employees who stay may be more damaging for your business than lost employees, and certainly more expensive over ...

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EQ, Empathy and Client Relationships in the Ad Agency Biz

Deborah Budd
4/9/2021

One of the best things about the smaller ad agency business is the closeness of agency-client relationships. By that, we mean the level of intimacy, even friendship that often develops ...

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Planning to Hire: Assessing Talent Needs, Budgets and Recruiting To-Dos

Deborah Budd
3/29/2021

For most smaller advertising agencies and marketing firms, hiring is something you do as you a) need more people due to account wins or in-demand skills, or b) you have ...

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