It’s easy for agency operations to be seen as a necessary evil. Some team members hate it, or at the very least, fail to see the point.

Even agency leaders have a hard time paying it any attention.

But Liz Rowe, chief operating officer at Re:Signal, believes that humanising your operations is the best way to get everyone on side.

With her unique background as an HR director turned ops leader, Liz has developed an approach that’s changed how her team views and implements operational processes.

“We educate our team on how it all links together,” explains Liz. “We have a really strong culture at Re:Signal, and an open door policy, so we talk to the team about a lot of things.”

“It’s about communicating with people and saying, ‘Look, if we’re not getting a real utilisation visual, then we don’t know if you’re overworked or not. We won’t know how long things should take.’”

Re:Signal’s approach to operations relies heavily on the team that the processes impact. The leadership team looks at the commercial figures, all whilst supporting the team on human level to meet their goals.

“We do face-to-face quality updates,” says Liz. “When we’re looking at processes, we engage the team first. We’re like, ‘What’s the best practice? What should it look like? How does this work for you?’”

Not only that, but the operational data given to the team has got to be relatable, otherwise people won’t follow processes.

“You’ve got to put that human element in.”

This humanising has led to a higher team engagement with processes; improved accuracy in project estimating and pricing; a better work-life balance for team members; and more effective capacity planning and resource allocation.

If you’re tired of your team treating ops like a chore and want to create a culture where everyone understands and values good operational practices, join us for this operations mastermind, where we’ll be discussing ways to really get them to care.