The Marketing Talent Pool – Running on empty?
THE REALITY
Census Canada recently released a report that “Management and professional occupations lead the retirement wave” with 55% of the workforce 40 or older. This is a terrifying statistic and leaves us to question what this will mean for Canadian Business in the next 10 years. Ultimately the traditional way of staffing up an organization (not to mention how we structure these organizations) is going to change. The Y generation is already throwing temper tantrums and demanding better work life balance. So what happens when that 55% retires? Does this mean that the workforce mix is going to change? Historically sticking with one company for life was of the norm. That is certainly not the case in today’s market. Will there be more freelancers and consultants? Will the age of retirement evaporate? Or will senior management be comprised of part timers making full time salaries just so the company can retain higher calibre talent? One thing that is sure to be noticed is that the immediate economic crisis has hiring in check. .. so when hiring is frozen and workloads boom... what does a marketer do to manage marketing resources(MRM)?
AN ALTERNATE ROUTE
What if a corporation knew they had a service that gave them access to high quality resources in marketing that were available quickly to address interim needs of the department to meet demand. This resource would eliminate the need to hire an additional Full Time Employee (FTE) or build additional resources and/or to farm the business to the costly advertising agency. This would in turn positively affect speed to market and address work life balance issues. This is not a new concept.
ACCOUNTING VERSUS MARKETING
The concept of bringing in skilled workers for short term assignments is not a new idea. Companies such as Adecco have made a huge name for themselves delivering generalist / admin temps on an as needed basis. However, when exploring the more senior and professional calibre roles, companies are far more reluctant to entertain temporary employees. The most common objections stem from concerns of the learning curve, because the common belief is ‘their business is so unique’, to more proprietary worries about confidentiality. Both these issues are easily overcome which has been clearly demonstrated by one company who started providing temps to the vertical considered most sacred… Finance. Accountemps has grown to become the largest and most successful financial temporary staffing firm in the world. It has since become very common to see firms that specialize in outsourcing/consulting for IT, HR, Supply Chain/ Operations and Creative services. Marketing however has not been a part of the temp renaissance.
The North American market for the Marketing Staffing segment has been estimated to be worth 1-3 Billion Dollars. The question that arises is if marketing staffing is such a hot service line, why are we not seeing more staffing firms focused on this segment, especially when there is so much depth in variety for the vertical? Marketing is deep and wide particularly within Fortune 500 organizations. Roles range from database management, brand/product management, Marcom, PR and Event Management, E-commerce and Market Research. The list goes on. So what is holding us back?
THE CLIMATE
Challenges a company faces within the marketing organization are far different from 10 years ago. Corporations are experiencing accelerated growth of core brands by expanding products and marketing programs. The explosion of new channels means that organizations more frequently run into skill gaps. Efforts to drive world class productivity limits bandwidth/resources for new marketing programs. Now add the whole Economy and recession fears to that equation. Efforts to find ways to cover surges of work in marketing departments often leads to outsourcing the load to the advertising agency… at a huge cost. This cost is not only monetary. When work life balance becomes compromised an organization runs into attrition risks. One risk is that overworked staff end up burning out and become less productive and take more sick leave. Secondly the reputation of the organization that becomes known as a ‘sweat shop’ has an adverse affect on ability to attract new good replacement talent. This is fast becoming an issue in marketing departments already!
BACK TO REALITY
When a company is striving to create a winning environment that values work life balance what happens when additional full time hires are not in the budget due to a head count freeze? It is becoming clear that out of the box thinking will be needed for companies to survive over the next decade. Marketing Resource Management will be an integral tool keep in mind for your survival kit.
