Budget Handling

Budget handling is as important in the advertising industry as it is in any other. Advertising agencies
typically construct a budget at the start of their fiscal year. This budget serves as roadmap for the
company to implement their plans of progress. In our survey of both the companies, we inquired the HR
department about why they think is budgeting important.

Following is a combined analysis of the importance of budgeting in the advertising industry:

Resource Allocation:
Every agency considers it a goal to gauge new clients. These clients bring in more workload, which often
becomes hard to handle for the existing workforce. Budgeting allows the HR department to determine
allocation of manpower in particular departments.

Handle Employee Affairs:

In our survey with the agencies, they stated that budgeting is crucial to handle employee affairs. These
affairs can be both personal and professional. Advertising industry is considered to be a poacher industry
hence employees are always on the brink of switching jobs based on better salaries. Budgeting helps in
addressing these employee queries.

Question 1:
How does the HR department manage and allocate budgets specifically dedicated to HR-related activities
such as training, recruitment, and employee benefits?

Team Reactivate:

Timeline:
As per our conversation with Dania, the budget for Team Reactive is pre-determined that is decided at
the beginning of the fiscal year.

Members Involved:
At the time of budgeting,

 the HR head is involved

 The finance department
 CEO
 CFO
These people are responsible of forming the budget in close collaboration.

Specifications
The pre-determined budget is allocated looking at the benefit it would bring to the organization. If any
special kind of training comes around that the HR thinks would exceed the budget – then a meeting is
held between HR and the POC to explain how it would help the employees or the organization goals.
Otherwise, any expensive training that is considered to not bring benefit to the organization is not
catered to.

Synergy Advertising

Timeline
Similar to the previous one, the budget for Synergy Advertising is pre-determined that is decided at the
beginning of the fiscal year.

Members Involved:
At the time of budgeting,

 the HR head is involved

 The finance department
 CEO
 Business director
 Director operations

These people are responsible of forming the budget in close collaboration.

Specifications
As per our conversation with the HR representative Mr. Razzaq, the company focuses more on internal
trainings i.e. utilizing available resources to share their experiences and teach on that basis. The
company is not working too much on external trainings.

Their budget is made according to the progressive goals of the company. They use forecasting strategy,
getting market insights from business director.

Question 2:
How do you measure the return on investment (ROI) for HR-related expenditures?

Team Reactivate
The HR head at the organization explained that there is no fixed metrics or a software to identify and
measure Return on Investment on HR-related expenditures. Everything is done manually on excel sheet,
which HR and finance, both have an access to.

This sheet contains the resource in the company and the business they brought to the organization. For
example, someone was hired at 60,000 rupees’ net salary per month. At the end of the year, the
organization will assess whether the investment was beneficial and what kind of project, pitches, or
campaigns the resource worked on that brought capital to the organization.

Synergy Advertising
Synergy has an excel sheet that is circulated between HR department, business director, and CEO of the
company. This excel sheet contains the expenditure and the related benefit it brought. Similar to TR, they
don’t have a dedicated software to assess the ROI on expenditures.

Industry Challenges

The following section contains the challenges for HR in the advertising industry. After our discussion with
both companies, one thing that was similar in their views was that the industry is termed as “Poacher
industry.” Every agency is on the hunt to hire good resources, which often requires poaching from other
companies by offering a better position/salary/benefits.

Question 1
What are the key challenges that the HR department faces within the advertising industry concerning
talent retention and development?

Team Reactivate
 They believe that it is tougher to make a talent stay when so many companies are out there in
the market.
 Team Reactivate believes that other agencies have better local brands that may attract talent.
 They also believe that other agencies are bigger in sizes and have been around for several more
years as compared to TR, so they naturally have better budgets to acquire good talent.

Synergy Advertising
 Synergy is among the top names in the market so the creative marketing teams of brands often
acquire talents from them. Brand is also enticing offer for the resource
 There is no standard for salaries in the market. Retention is tough in a non-standardized market
where anyone can demand any sum.
  Measuring ROI for campaign expenditures is still a dilemma
 Rapid transformation to digital keeps the company on the toes.

Question 2
Could you highlight any unique HR-related challenges that arise in the advertising field compared to
other industries?

Team Reactivate
They think that this industry is rapidly transforming towards digitalization. More brands are getting more
focused on performance marketing. Because of this, HR has to constantly evolve itself and bring about
suggestions to stay ahead of the competition.

Synergy Advertising
Synergy Advertising believes that the fast-paced environment is unique to the industry as compared to
any other out there. Here employee turnover is the highest and retention is tough.

Secondly, they believe that the resource in this industry is the most diverse. Creative thinkers do not
necessarily need experience to perform at high level. It is a challenge for them to identify these talents
and nurture their growth for the future of the organization.