Job Redesign and Workplace Rewards Assessment: Advertising art director at an advertising agency

Job components, tasks, or responsibilities

Employees whose work focuses on designing the content of advertising often have a greater deal of leeway in terms of governing their day than other types of employees. Advertising professionals are 'creatives,' meaning that their output is more subjective in its value than, say, a factory employee that must produce so much of a particular product per diem or even an accounting professional that must perform an audit. An advertising art director's role is serving the customer. "An art director usually works alongside a copywriter to form a 'creative team'. Traditionally, the copywriter produces the words to go with the visuals created by the art director" (Advertising art director, 2014, AGCAS). Working with the client closely from the beginning to gain a sense of what the client needs from a particular project; storyboarding an advertisement; working on location during the direction of an advertisement are all components of the art director's job.

In general, a great deal of intrinsic motivation or 'love of the job' is assumed: most persons in advertising take a great deal of personal pride in offering a high-quality product. Although most major companies offer competitive salaries to art directors, they are traditionally not the highest-paid professionals at the organization at least in part because of the fact that the excitement of generating an imaginative product is supposed to be part of the inherent pleasures and therefore the rewards of the work. Art directors are not hired purely based upon education and past experience alone: they must exhibit enthusiasm and embody the ethos of the advertising content the company is striving to produce. Advertising is never a fungible and interchangeable product -- every piece of advertising is unique and every advertising agency strives to have a unique style.

Company-wide rewards

Advertising professionals may be rewarded on commission or upon salary. Advertising art directors are usually salary-based professionals, versus advertising salespersons those who sell the content to other entities. With performance-based rewards, a "winning system should recognize and reward two types of employee activity-performance and behavior" (Cutler 2014). In other words, employees should be judged on output...

For example, in the case of our company's art directors, evaluations are made of their performance in terms of how they please clients and if the projects they are responsible for result in high client retention.
But positive behaviors are also rewarded: team leaders are responsible for rating all 'creatives' on a team in terms of how they make a contribution to the project as a whole. These are derived from the impressions of overall employee performance. Both types of rating systems are necessary when distributing rewards given that someone who is not a strong performer might find him or herself on a high-performing team, for example. Also, individualized performance reviews outside of a project-specific focus allows for employees to receive individual input on their own actions and can be motivational for strong employees to set personally higher standards than that of the general company standard. Bonuses may be offered for particularly strong or noteworthy projects that result in dividends for the organization on a team basis and on an individual basis. Profit-sharing on a company basis can also encourage employees to work consistently hard by linking their work with the growth of the organization.

Many organizations have generated bonus and reward systems that transcend pure profit-focused initiatives, however. The Google corporation offers paid time to engineers to research their own projects, not out of altruism but partially out of recognition that talented employees can come up with good ideas on their own. This creates a bond between company and employees as well, as workers are grateful of the ability to 'think outside the box' and explore the playgrounds of their minds, even while at work.

In fact, the entire Googleplex is set up to encourage creativity. By offering employees free food and fitness classes, this acts as a disincentive to leave Google to go out to eat or to the gym. With on-site health clinics, daycare, and dry cleaning and even buses which drive employees to work, every moment of the day is free of petty distractions other than work (Google benefits, 2014, Google). Many organizations are offering at least some of these types of benefits, in acknowledgement of the responsibilities employees shoulder in raising families. Benefits often have a dual function of both rewarding the employee and encouraging more productivity, such…