Behold, my fantasy unfurls before me.
Finally, the PR industry is embroiled in a sparky debate about the value of timesheets. Beyond the state of written English in the workplace today or the utter genius of Eric Cantona, there are few things I’d rather read about.
Thank you, Graham Goodkind, for lighting the blue touchpaper with your reported claim and subsequent slight backtracking that timesheets are “meaningless”. I understand your point and think I know what you meant to say. But you are so wrong.
When I read the pieces in/on PR Moment and PR Week, I had planned a rip-roarer of a blog post. But life is too short, so I’ll try to make this calm, rational, professional and constructive. And in time-honoured fashion, delivered as a list, so people can bicker about them and make other suggestions. Here’s why timesheets are not meaningless, but meaningful:
1. PR agencies are time and expenses businesses. Like law firms, accountancy businesses, et al. If you do not have an accurate view, or indeed any view, of what time you spend doing the work you risk going bust or your people blowing a gasket.
2. Look, timesheets are a sh*t. I look forward to them like I lust after polishing shoes or disinfecting the bog. But that’s life. They help me make my working life more organised, so I can get home earlier and have a life outside work. Some structure, at least, instead of probable anarchy. Yes the value of timesheets has limits, but the alternative of not having them is a road to ruin.
3. PR is changing fast. Clients may not want to see timesheets but agencies must tell them how their budgets are being spent and respond to changing needs. If your agency does your work by just chucking whatever time is necessary at it, you’ll have a hard time when the procurement team comes knocking to discuss efficiencies. The best results in the word and the most bravado will not help you.
4. If you don’t have some record, albeit with probably grey areas, of what the team has been doing then you risking people not doing their fair share and others copping the brunt. So you’ll have loyal but disaffected people leaving and slackers sitting pretty. Which is f&cking stupid. You may be able to spot that anyway, but employment law is complex, so rely on your hunches and observations at your peril.
5. How can you cost your time-based services if you don’t measure how long you’ve take to do the work? Of course the client doesn’t really care if you overservice, but if your people all leave because of it, or your inability to pay the best available bonus because of it , then they might well start caring.
6. If your people indiscriminately lie about their timesheets all the time, timesheets are not the problem. It is that your people are liars, and/or feel compelled to lie.
7. If your timesheets are such a ball-ache to fill in, change the system. But don’t do away with the system.
8. PR has been struggling to show itself as a professional sector for years. Showing we’ll willingly give stuff away for free without knowing we’re doing so, and burning people out in the process, doesn’t chime well.
9. Smaller clients always fear bigger clients will get too much agency attention when they stamp their feet. Timesheets are your only real way (away with your arguments about the brilliance of results) of proving that they’re getting at least what they pay for.
10. They’re an aide in reminding people that as well as farting around writing blog posts all day, there is some proper work to do.
I have tracked my 30 minutes (sorry, snacking) spent writing this blog post under ‘Speed business development/general’.
The Great (yawn) Agency Timesheet Debate http://goo.gl/fb/ndTHR (@mynameisearl)
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Blog -The Great (yawn) Agency Timesheet Debate: http://bit.ly/bWJcQP.
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The agency timesheet debate, blog by @mynameisearl http://goo.gl/fb/ndTHR @SpeedComms #PR #timesheet
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Had almost identical thoughts in my own post on the topic about 5 minutes ago – http://j.mp/bdDCFy . Nice to see them backed up by someone actually involved at the high level, was worried it was just my naive perspective…
No sooner do I post my thoughts on timesheets biz (j.mp/bdDCFy) than @mynameisearl sweeps in w the big picture (http://bit.ly/bWJcQP)
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Thanks Max and to be honest I could see the worth of timesheets when I was an account exec. My views haven’t changed, although the bloody things are at least now a bit easier to fill in. And I (cough) always do them on time.
[...] For more on the topic, have a read of Speed MD, Steve Earl’s post which appeared almost simultaneously to this one. About [...]
Oh, this whole timesheets debate has given me a Rainier flashback…
freelance is the way forward, no timesheets, just a few bullets outlining your actions and results and (hopefully) happy clients!
The root of the problem seems to be the old ‘process vs results’ argument, ie that process/planning/research/rigour is frumpy and boring and really creative people can achieve results just by being spontaneously brilliant. Unfortunately you need to put the hours in to get good results 90% (YMMV) of the time and clients need to understand this too.
The crux of your argument is that PR is a time and expense business, just like lawyers and accountants. All your points then lead from that starting point.
The day we become like lawyers and accountants is the day to call time on PR in my book. I don’t want to be put in the same bracket as a lawyer and accountant. Doing that just completely commoditises the service offered by PR agencies. It doesn’t necessarily make it more ‘professional’ at all either.
This industry (well the bit of it I mix in anyway) is frequented by creative, inquisitive, ideas hungry people out there to change the world for their clients. Not pen pushers, robots and slaves to time, just doing the hours on a client, because of a fee they pay. They add value and have unique talents, they are not just numbers, titles and hourly rates.
To us, PR is not a commodity service.
And the best lawyers (and accountants) I’ve come across actually DON’T charge by time either FYI.
When I sold Frank a few years back to Photon, the lawyers who pitched to respresent us did so on the basis of the value they could add for us in the deal, and charged us a % of that. The hours they worked to make the deal happen were not part of the fee that we agreed and paid. And we got a pretty good deal for the business, which operates very profitably (at a margin that might even surprise you) and efficiently, without ever having completed one time sheet in its 10 years!
Try it, you might even like it…..(but don’t knock it until you’ve tried).
Thanks for the reply Graham. I have tried it without timesheets, and it didn’t work. Not because we lacked creativity, ideas or passion, but because it simply didn’t allow us to do the job the way clients ideally wanted it done and our people wanted to do it. I accept that it can work other ways, it just didn’t for me. Which is why although I know some agencies are now actually touting the ‘no timesheets here’ message as a benefit, I can’t see how staff would not see that as a red flag for a world of overwork and bonus seepage. Perhaps I’m too clinical, perhaps I’m a control freak. Perhaps I should shut up, although I’ve also tried that and it has never worked.
The last thing I’d want to be, professionally, is like a lawyer or an accountant. They certainly don’t seem to enjoy a more controllable approach to workload as a result of timesheets. And in their own way, I’ve known some highly creative lawyers and accountants.
Equally, PR agencies are businesses. They need gears, steering, controls like that. Timesheets don’t have to make for commodity businesses, but they can be an important rudder and a tool for helping to avoid burnout.
The Great (yawn) Agency Timesheet Debate | Earlin’ PR abuse http://bit.ly/bwlCdI (via @twttimes)
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