Telecommuting Memo Sam Hagar, Practice

Telecommuting Memo

Sam Hagar, Practice Director, Waggoner Edstrom -- Los Angeles

From: Neal Page, Account Executive, Waggoner Edstrom -- Chicago

Proposal for Telecommuting Program for Account Executives and Client Project Teams

Time is the most precious asset our firm has, and for our creative teams, the most billable. Nearly 75% of our profits last year at Waggoner Edstrom were directly related to new accounts, and in several new account reviews our creative teams displaced agencies including McCann-Erickson and Edelman. With net bookings up 33% from a year ago in the midst of continued economic headwinds, our best clients cut their spending with us by 20%, our teams continue to produce results.

There is much debate and discussion amongst our senior management, project management and creative teams as to why we continue to win account reviews and displace some of the best advertising agencies in the world. While anecdotal data is abundant in our firm today, I've done research on just how these teams were able to respond so quickly in account reviews with an amazing depth of insight, intelligence and creativity. The common assumption by our management team is that this exceptional performance is from the financial bonus multipliers associated with these recently won accounts, with our senior designers earning nearly two times their baseline salaries. That wasn't it. It was the freedom they felt working at home and the flexibility to work when they were the most productive, while staying connected with Internet-based collaboration software, that led to new business proposals the best our new clients had ever seen. It wasn't the dollars that delivered these new accounts, it was allowing these teams to create their own virtual culture, their own way of attacking very aggressive, challenging deadlines while still staying connected to their families. As you have been in the ad agency business for decades, you recognize how "account review" strikes fear and opportunity into designers and creative teams. Fear comes from the prospect they will have to work very late in the office, face a commute that is hellish in length, and start it all over every day.

Winning the Nike account would not have been possible if the team had not created their own virtual team and were able to work, uninterrupted, for three weeks straight. Our competition for that account was McCann-Erickson Weiden+Kennedy. The Nike account is the largest we have been able to attract in a decade of participating in agencies reviews.

Rationale

Telecommuting made it possible for the Waggoner-Edstrom creative teams to be more productive working in collaboration with each other, while at the same time investing the best work hours of their days on the proposals, not on fighting traffic or commuting.

Our new secret weapon is a virtual team structure, providing our creative and account teams the autonomy to organize their workloads as they choose, and giving them mastery and purpose over their project direction. Best of all, from a financial standpoint, billable hours can increase by 30% a month as our teams will spend less time commuting. The combining of autonomy, mastery and purpose is proving to be an even more powerful motivator than monetary reward for these teams. For many of our designers and creative contributors, their most productive time are the commute hours. Instead of forcing the regiment of spending hours coming in and out of the office, it makes far more sense to allow them to work virtually. Investing these hours in high quality work is far more important than forcing them to be in the office, when there is ample evidence they are more productive working from home.

Research Plan

To fully quantify and evaluate the proposal of virtual teams with workers who can telecommute, I proposed the following stages of research:

1. Literature review of best practices in advertising agencies and creative teams as it relates to productivity and performance in-office vs. virtually via telecommuting. There are many empirical studies of telecommuting; the challenge will be to find studies specific to our industry. The outcome of this step will be a summary and series of metrics, both operational and financial, describing contributions and limitations of this proposed strategy.

2. Attitudinal and performance-based surveys of existing team members who have worked in-office and in virtual teams will first be completed. Second, 360-degree feedback of teams who have employed virtual meeting workspaces online and virtual team formats will be done. The goal of these steps are to determine if there are any hidden or unforeseen problems in adopting this approach.

3. Evaluate the current technology that the agency has and determine if it can scale across several teams working virtually at the same time. Also included in this analysis will an assessment of security, mobile device support including advanced graphics systems, and secured VPN access over the Internet.

4. Quantify the tax benefits of having a telecommuting workforce and reduction in parking, utilities and associated costs. This will be part of the Return on Investment (ROO) calculation to underscore the value of this strategy.

5. Create and present the final results of this study from both a hard and soft factors standpoint, showing the potential to gain greater revenue from more billable hours, generate higher quality work given the flexibility this program, and also retain our most talented and skilled employees.

Resources and Budget

It is anticipated this entire project will take about 30 days, and require 15 hours of my personal time. I am so passionate about this subject and see it as such a competitive advantage for the firm, I am willing to work a Saturday for no pay to do this, I am just asking for 7 hours over 30 days to interview team members who are working virtually, and also use business hours to do research on our cost savings as a result of telecommuting.