BLOG: Dougal Paver says creative firms must invest in training

By Alistair Houghton on Aug 24, 09 08:30 AM

HERE'S the latest from LDP Creative blogger Dougal Paver:

A BUSINESSMAN is chatting to an associate over a late-night beer in Alma de Cuba.
The pair are sharing war stories, offering each other advice and generally drinking from the cup of wisdom when the subject turns to training.
"I'm not wasting money on training," opines the younger of the two. "What happens if I train them and they leave?"

The other says: "Yeah, but what happens if you don't train them and they stay?"
The fact remains that creative businesses are, largely, woeful when it comes to investing in a structured, focused training resource for their people. Even the most basic good practice gets overlooked.
Put another way, you can count on the fingers of one hand the creative businesses on Merseyside that have Investors In People status, the benchmark for good practice people policies. This is standard stuff for other professional service firms.
"We're too busy being creative, man," goes the general theme. Well, if you're busy ignoring the career aspirations and ambitions of your best people guess what's going to happen? They'll leave you for an agency that takes them seriously. And how disruptive and expensive is that going to be?
Our strategy is to look like our ideal customers. When prospective clients look at us we want them to see a reflection of themselves: focused, professional, organised and responsible.
It's taken time, but we're getting there. And the best thing is that the minute you start the journey, you see the benefits flow. Key, of course, is that whatever you do has to be driven from the top. If people get the faintest sniff that this isn't really the MD's priority, they'll drop it.
So we find ourselves with Investors in People status, our industry equivalent of ISO 9001 (called the Consultancy Management Standard, which only 6% of UK PR agencies have) and our own in-house PR Training Academy that is the third largest expense line on my P&L. And by November we'll have the ISO 14001 environmental management standard.
A load of window dressing that masks real creativity? Not from where we're sitting. Being organised and efficient actually buys you more time to be creative. By contrast, running round like a blue-arsed fly means more stress, less creativity and less time.
More to the point, clients like it. All this has been key to us winning accounts like the National Lottery and Shell. How do we know? They told us. Even this week we secured a £48,000 retainer from a business involved in chemicals who told us that one of the key differentiators was our commitment to ISO 14001 and our wider focus on standards.
It's not easy - if it was, everyone would be at it. But it's a darn sight easier than fighting to replace the loss of good people and good clients.

Dougal Paver is managing director of Paver Smith in Liverpool