Oof. We have layoffs about every 90 days. The pressure to be billable is more intense than your typical agency culture. So you have people who are dumping time on tasks because they have access to them. And then PM has to figure out how to bill all that time to the client but that's not really fair but ya know not everything can (nor should it be) be billed. So then you have nonbillable time sitting on your brand. If your nonbillable dollars get too high then your brand isn't profitable. If your brand isn't profitable then members of your brand will be on the next round of layoffs with no approvals on a backfill. So people don't want to be seen as redundant so they bill to everything they have access to. And then the cycle continues.
There is this pressure to RTO but there have been so many layoffs that there is hardly anyone left to attend these "love your affiliate" parties. And not only have we laid off some really amazing people (wish I could name names) but we've also lost some key and influential personalities willingly. That's right: there are leaders who were privy to the layoff lists who chose the severance to save others because they themselves were willing to go out into this horrible job market than keep working for Eversana.
The one question I get often is how can this agency be hiring if we are also laying people off? Why not move people around (like we did in the old days)? Well, because not all of the layoffs are because of restructuring or redundancies, that's why. So which were you? Were you a redundancy or were you a "redundancy"? You'll likely never actually know because we exist in layoff culture now and companies like Eversana are guided by bean counters. Perhaps the first round or two of layoffs were true redundancy because we were overstaffed for awhile, but now it's not enough to be billable. So everyone just remember that: it's not enough to be billable so stop overbilling your time and making other people clean up your mess because that overbilling will not save you if you just aren't up to snuff by other standards you are being held to.
Also don't be surprised if the people who report to you make more of a salary that you do. Those "pay bands" they hire under don't actually mean anything if they aren't honored for legacy employees are choose to remain loyal. How fair is it that people are in higher positions with higher expectations, broader visibility, and have years more experience are making less than those who report to them?
