State of Agencies 2021: What challenges are agencies facing?

Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix got its name from Dwight D. Eisenhower. According to the Eisenhower Matrix, you should categorize tasks into four categories:

• Urgent and important: These are tasks that are crucial for completing a project. You need to tend to these as soon as possible.

• Not urgent, but important: Tasks in this category don’t require your immediate attention. However, they’re still important for moving a project forward. You need to make sure to schedule time to complete these tasks.

• Urgent, but not important: This category includes tasks that you need to complete quickly. However, they’re not very important for the project itself. You can safely outsource these tasks if you don’t have the capacity to handle them in-house.

• Neither urgent nor important: Is there a task on your to-do list that's neither urgent nor important? You should probably remove it from your team’s to-do list altogether.

Note that tasks can move from one category to another depending on circumstances. That’s why it’s important to revisit the matrix from time to time to make sure it’s up-to-date.

Check out these other tips for managing multiple projects along with productivity techniques to dive deeper into productive work.

2. Manage projects with a powerful project management tool

Project management software can solve many of the big challenges agencies deal with, including:

• Prioritizing work: Ensure employees are assigned to and working on the right tasks.

• Meeting deadlines: You can assign due dates for both projects and tasks to let team members know when their work is due. Some tools offer a project timeline feature, which allows you to get a quick overview of project status.

• Getting team members to submit updates: Embrace daily stand-up meetings or recaps to completely automate status reports.

• Making accurate project estimates: A good project management software also lets you integrate with time tracking, so that you can see hours spent on a project and assign a budget. This, in turn, can help you make accurate project estimates.

2. Only 43% of agencies consider their team productive

As expected during a global pandemic, the agencies surveyed were also dealing with productivity issues. Only 43% of respondents considered their team to be productive.

Another 38% felt that their team was sometimes productive, while 15% claimed that their team isn’t productive at all.

This might be a result of agencies still trying to adapt to remote work.

There’s also the impact of the pandemic itself on productivity to take into account.

Companies that managed their time, talent, and energy well, before 2020, have fared much better than those that did not, according to HBR.

“For companies that struggled to collaborate productively before the pandemic, work-from-home orders only made matters worse. To begin with, the time consumed in virtual meetings exploded,” the article explained.

In other words, if your team didn’t focus on collaboration and efficiency before, the pandemic made both much worse.

To return to previous levels of productivity, both managers and team members need to adapt.

It’s easy to gauge if employees are working when you’re in the office with them. With remote work, it can be hard to understand what team members are doing throughout the day.

This leaves managers in an awkward position trying to understand if work is getting done remotely.

Further, team members might find it difficult to manage their time now that they’re working from home.

These two things combined lead to decreased productivity for agencies.

How to address this?

While we can’t impact global health, there are some small adjustments you can make to set your teams up for success.

Create clear process documentation

One of the best ways to boost productivity is to ensure employees know their priorities and the expectations around completing work. You can do this by creating step-by-step processes with input from your team.

Apart from saving time, this will also help to reduce the number of errors team members make.

Here’s how to create clear process documentation:

• Define process scope. The first step is to write a brief description of the scope of the process. The brief should mention everything the process includes, as well as what it doesn’t.Define process scope. The first step is to write a brief description of the scope of the process. The brief should mention everything the process includes, as well as what it doesn’t.

• Explain boundaries. Every process in your agency needs to have a clear start and end point. Explain where your process starts and where it ends, and what might bring you into scope creep territory.

• Identify inputs and outputs. What resources are needed to complete the process? What’s the end result or deliverable? Make sure to include this information in your process documentation.

• Outline all the steps. This is the most important part of any process document. Describe all the steps needed to complete the process.

• Name stakeholders and assign teams. Finally, name all the people involved in completing the process. Make sure to assign every step in the process to someone.

Help employees get better at managing their time

Another approach is to be more proactive and help employees better manage their time. You can share the following tips with them and start a discussion about how people prefer to work.

It’s entirely possible that everyone in your agency has their own productivity hacks to share.

• Use a time management system. Using a time management system can help your employees almost instantly improve their time management skills. Some systems you can recommend include Getting Things Done (GTD), the Pomodoro technique, task batching, and time blocking.

• Take regular breaks. Taking breaks is important for staying concentrated and avoiding burnout. Encourage employees to take breaks regularly throughout the day to reset and come back to a task with fresh eyes.

• Reduce distractions. Remote employees face a lot of distractions when working from home. Recommend that team members find a room or corner in their home that they can dedicate as a “workspace.” Consider buying noise-canceling headphones for the entire team to help them focus when working from home.

• Making accurate project estimates: A good project management software also lets you integrate with time tracking, so that you can see hours spent on a project and assign a budget. This, in turn, can help you make accurate project estimates.

All of my teams are productive because we function based on goals, rather than time spent at work. Meet your weekly goals and you’re good to go for the week, even if you’re done two days early.

Dmytro Okunyev, Founder at Chanty

Use proof of work software

Tools that provide productivity benchmarks can help you keep an eye on your team’s productivity, and celebrate wins or improvements. Productivity software can help:

• Set a baseline so you can check-in when rates dip

• Find out when team members are struggling with their workload\

• Discover bottlenecks in your team’s workflow

• Send virtual high fives for accomplishing a task that’s due or improving productivity

Every team member likely requires different feedback and motivation, so make sure to adjust your methods accordingly.

72% of agencies trust their outsourced staff

Another 16% of respondents said they sometimes trust their staff, which means that a large majority of agencies are happy with who they’re working with.

However, trust doesn’t just happen overnight.

41% of respondents said they have tools and processes in place to ensure their outsourced staff is working when they say they are.

Since so many agencies rely on freelancers to complete projects, it’s common to develop systems that foster a trusting, symbiotic relationship.

Here’s what one agency pro had to say about trust.

As I’m part of an agency specialized in IT outsourcing, I am all too familiar with having nothing but trust in our outsourced staff to deliver for our clients. I believe that agencies like ours can achieve this confidence in their staff by devoting time and resources to continue developing their skills and knowledge, as well as their collaborative processes. When you have a blend of timely, responsive, and easy to work with industry experts, you have a strong foundation to deliver the best results for your clients.

Shaun Kennedy, Copywriter & Social Media Strategist at Rootstrap

This sentiment echoed a trend in 2020 where people leaned on each other more. Coming together and working toward shared goals is something we hope continues for years to come — within agencies and elsewhere.

How agencies manage outsourced staff

Creating the ideal collaborative relationship takes a fair bit of planning. We wanted to find out which processes and tools agencies use with outsourced staff. For many, project management and time tracking topped the list.

51% of all respondents use project management software to manage outsourced staff. 45% use time tracking solutions.

However, not everyone defaults to software.

Over 14% of agencies said they don’t track projects or hours. Even more surprisingly, nearly 13% still use paper timesheets.

Those who don’t track hours at all might include smaller agencies that are dedicated to one or a few clients. It’s easier to keep track of work with fewer people on staff. Or, you might have retainers in place that are related to work output instead of hours.

This group might also include another sub-set of agencies that have used timesheets in the past and found them challenging, or those that operate with a different billing structure such as monthly flat fees.

In general, most agencies use project or time management tools to help meet deadlines and stay profitable.

5. Agencies are spending up to 20 hours per month on payroll and invoicing

You might already know that payroll and invoicing are some of the most time-consuming administrative tasks.

While 76% of agencies spend less than 7 hours per month on these tasks, some are spending up to 20 hours. A small group of 2.2% spends over 20 hours per month.

That means that 37% of agencies spend nearly one day each month on payroll and invoicing.

That’s a lot of time, especially when you could be spending those hours getting new clients and completing projects.

How can you save hours on payroll and invoicing?

It might come down to the process you have in place. For the 9% who manually calculate payroll and invoices from spreadsheets or templates, the answer might be billing or accounting software.

One positive trend to see is that:

32% of agencies use payroll or invoicing software

That’s a good way to keep the hours you spend on admin work low.

Look for more automation

To speed things up even further, you can see if the tool you’re using integrates with your project management software, time tracking tool, CRM platform, and more. There’s plenty of automation to seek out that can save you time and money in the long run.

This includes setting a separate bill and pay rate for each person, so when it’s time to invoice, you have the amounts calculated.

The same goes for sending payments. The amounts are ready to go based on hours worked and each person’s hourly rate.