Survival of the fittest and healthiest in a lean, mean digital world
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday April 1, 2011
Sometimes I worry about the health of our industry, and not just big bottom lines and fat profits.I had a senior agency executive in my office this week huffing and puffing about all the extra work being generated by modern TV buying. His company is doing OK but some of his people are in awful shape, with their personal bottom lines blowing out to XXXL and more.He was talking about streamlining, and well he might, but sadly for him (and his family) his thoughts were only on trying to avoid ballooning staff costs.Nevertheless he has a point. In 2002 the advertising services industry, according to IBIS World, employed 10,283 people. By last year it had increased by only 4.5 per cent, to 10,750, and yet total ad spending had moved from 8.6 billion to 12.5 billion, an increase of 45 per cent. All this extra work is being done by hardly any more people simply because people are expensive and the digital age gives us the tools to do more with less.The new marketing proposals will reduce budgets further by the clever use of all sorts of new strategies for the rapidly expanding digital media. Try and tell that story to some stick-in-the-mud advertising people who think that advertising budgets should only increase. They'll just have to work harder and smarter or be left behind.And that's where keeping an eye on our personal bottom line becomes really important. John Howard used to walk that crazy fast walk 45 minutes every day in the world's worst track suits - no work for fat Fed coppers with the former PM. And tradition continues with the wannabe PM, though some say that we should be careful not to overtrain.Charlie has always been a bit of a fitness freak, and the object of his fat-burning attention is his 23-gear Malvern Star. Charlie's 90-year-old dad set the pattern. He still works hard outdoors every day and was last seen up a gum tree with a chainsaw cutting off a dangerous limb."That's nothing" says Charlie's dad. "Most of youse blokes with sit-down jobs are struggling to get up the corporate ladder, let alone a mountain ash."He's not wrong. Australian business intelligence research shows that the healthiest employees are nearly three times more productive than those with poorer health. And Swedish research shows that fit workers make 60 per cent fewer errors on jobs involving concentration and short-term memory.It shouldn't surprise any of us that reliable studies show executive burn-out is caused by poor eating habits, obsessive overwork and fatigue.Everyone in business should take account of the fact that healthy employees take nine times fewer sick days than workers with poorer health.And don't think that adrenalin is the answer. Adrenalin exhaustion can result when we try to do too much in too little time and don't allow space in our schedules for relaxation, restful sleep and eating healthy foods.The nutritionalist Jack Challem, author of No More Fatigue, says an epidemic of fatigue is leaving people physically and emotional spent. He firmly believes that, while fatigue is always a major problem, with an estimated one in three suffering worldwide, it has been exacerbated by the recession, which pushed up stress levels.So if we want really healthy businesses, we need really healthy people because, as the American cowboy Will Rogers once said, "Even if you're on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there."
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald
