Employee quality in communication agencies

Agencies sell the work of people. Concepts, texts and campaigns arise in exchange with the customer, and often the task itself takes shape only in this exchange. The study therefore treats employees as a quality factor in their own right, as the enabler employee quality. Three features were tested: employees’ satisfaction, their entrepreneurial orientation and their communicative competence. In the final model, only one of them determines the factor: communicative competence. For entrepreneurial orientation, which attracts much attention in the marketing literature, no significant contribution could be demonstrated even in the initial model.

What the study understands by employee quality

In the QMC model, the quality management model for the communication industry, employee quality describes an agency’s ability to win its employees over for the objectives of the organization. The enabler corresponds to the EFQM criterion of employees, with one change. In EFQM, employees appear twice, as enabler and as result. The QMC model lists them only as an enabler, because otherwise input and output could not be measured independently of each other. For the same reason, the pre-test discarded employee motivation from the success parameters.

The contractors rated three statements about the employees of their agency on a scale from 1 (poor performance) to 5 (top performance).

• The agency’s employees are satisfied with their work environment.
• The agency’s employees are entrepreneurially oriented, i.e. creative, innovative, proactive and committed.
• The agency’s employees dispose of communicative competence.

Motivation and competence in the specialist literature

The theoretical basis comes from motivation research. Deci and Ryan distinguish intrinsic motivation, which comes from the task itself, from extrinsic motivation, which responds to reward or threatened punishment. Porter and Lawler describe a cycle in which performance is rewarded, the reward improves attitude and the improved attitude triggers further performance. Nerdinger concludes that autonomy generates intrinsic motivation. In the agency context, the term intrapreneurship often appears, that is, entrepreneurial action by employees marked by creativity, willingness to take risks and proactivity.

With Spitzberg, the thesis understands competence as a combination of knowledge, skill and motivation in a particular field. In the communication business, this field is communication itself. Agencies create intangible values such as image, satisfaction and trust (Vargo and Lusch), and these values arise in conversations both outwards and inwards. Sasser and Arbeit see in a firm’s own employees the first market for every new idea.

Six of the 31 evaluated studies on quality factors concern employees. Hsieh examined 318 sales representatives in Taiwan and found that high-performing, intrinsically committed employees respond best to social incentives. According to DeConinck, satisfaction and involvement lead to stronger attachment to the organization and reduce the tendency to change jobs, which secures an agency’s knowledge base. Armbruster and Kieser show that intrapreneurship programmes strengthen employees’ self-efficacy. Heinonen and Korvela measure a positive relationship between entrepreneurial attitude, commitment and customer satisfaction. Hirst and colleagues evaluate 115 rating pairs of employees and superiors and find an influence of leadership on motivation and creativity.

From this, the study derived four categories: employees’ satisfaction, their attachment and commitment, their entrepreneurial orientation and their internal and communicative competence.

The pre-test discards commitment

In the pre-test, employee commitment scored 1.25 out of 3 points, 0.45 below the total mean, and was dropped. The interviewees could hardly separate it from satisfaction and entrepreneurial orientation. One objected that an entrepreneur is committed by definition. The same interviewee stated that they did not understand the term entrepreneurial orientation. To avoid misunderstandings in the main survey, the questionnaire explained the term explicitly.

How the contractors rated the employees

Of the three features, communicative competence scored best, with a mean of 3.67 on the scale from 1 to 5. Entrepreneurial orientation followed with 3.58. For both features, 59% of the respondents chose one of the two upper levels. Employee satisfaction received 3.21, and only 45% chose one of the upper levels. This is the lowest value among the twelve statements with which the survey captured the enablers. Contractors can, however, only assess the satisfaction of employees who are not their own from the outside.

What the structural model shows

In the initial model, employee quality reached an estimate of 0.14 at p = 0.09. The core hypothesis H2 was thus accepted at the level that the study applies throughout (p < 0.10). A gradient emerged between the features. Communicative competence served as the reference indicator, satisfaction loaded at 0.14 (p ≈ 0.13, reported by the study rounded as 0.1), and the study counts the partial hypotheses H2a and H2c as accepted. Entrepreneurial orientation loaded at −0.03 (p = 0.72). A significant contribution to employee quality could not be demonstrated; the partial hypothesis H2b was rejected.

In the final model, employee quality, with a standardized weight of 0.14 (p = 0.093), is the second strongest enabler, a long way behind leadership efficiency (Results). Within the factor, almost the entire weight lies on communicative competence (standardized 0.95). Satisfaction comes to 0.11 and, at p = 0.13, is not significant in the final model either.

Why entrepreneurial orientation is not significant

The finding contradicts part of the literature. In marketing and sales, entrepreneurial thinking by employees is regarded as a success factor. The study therefore included it in the model, and the contractors did attest this quality to agency employees, with a mean of 3.58. A significant relationship with the perceived quality of agency work nevertheless could not be demonstrated.

The study examined whether the feature had merely been assigned to the wrong factor. Even as part of a new factor in the first model amendment, it remained without effect (Results). The thesis interprets this to mean that contractors possibly perceive a high degree of entrepreneurial orientation in agency employees as excessive business orientation. In both models, communicative competence carries the factor.

Employees and leadership in interplay

The literature mostly treats employees and leadership separately. The study estimates both factors in one model but does not depict the connection between leadership efficiency and employee quality as a path of its own. Cross-relationships are not modelled (Limitations and outlook).

The 0.14 therefore describes the direct contribution of the employees in a model without cross-relationships between the enablers. How large the share mediated through leadership is remains an open research question.

Conclusions for everyday agency life

Contractors experience a team’s communicative competence in direct contact, and in the final model it determines the factor employee quality almost on its own. According to the study, employees’ creativity unfolds in informal workflows rather than in formalized quality programmes. The conclusions in context are set out under Practice.