Creative Studios: Metrics that matter when it comes to our people

1 year ago by

This article is sponsored by Streamtime:


A few weeks back we shared the results from the 2022 Mentally Healthy Survey ( watch the recap here ) which set out to measure the mental health and wellbeing of the media, marketing and creative industry in Australia and New Zealand.

Following on from some of the key findings from this research is the question, ‘How can studio owners and managers better support the health and wellbeing of their teams?’

Andy Wright, CEO at Streamtime, shared with us the people first metrics they’re using within their organisation and how they’re helping creative studio owners easily implement these metrics into their own businesses too.

The future for creative studios: People centred metrics

“We need metrics that measure the health of our people, not just our bank accounts and client relationships. When was the last time you reflected on the health of your team and whether they’re able to do their best work? Compare that to the time spent worrying about your clients and if they’re happy.”

“The recent work we’ve been doing focuses heavily on making sure we’re moving in a direction that creates healthier agencies. We’re questioning what the metrics should be that are important to agencies of the future. In 2030 – and probably before – they should look something like this:

“Hours, utilisation, profit margin. KPI’s for neanderthals! What we measure now are;

  • project clearance rates – how efficiently we get through tasks that need to get done.
  • team and individual motivation scores – how people feel trusted, fulfilled and clear on their expectations
  • client quality scores – the magic formula of profit, volume of work, and team happiness 

Another key metric the team at Streamtime like to track,

  • Reduce stress-related sick days. Across the Streamtime community we’ve just passed 90 days without a stress-related incident. Of course, we encourage teams to plan and take mental health days, but much better if they’re proactive rather than reactive. This is now one of our key performance metrics. It’s really encouraging to see that creative businesses are starting to get a better reputation for battling the burnout that used to occur more regularly in their teams.”
“We’re creatives, not bean-counters. 
There are times when we need to do the admin and count the beans – for sure, but not to the detriment of our creativity.”

At Streamtime, helping studios create healthier businesses with healthier people is at the heart of their thinking and philosophy.

If you ever want to chat about this and how to work on having a healthier creative business, book in a chat and demo with the Streamtime team to see how their software can help your business here.


About Andy Wright

Andy is the CEO of Streamtime. He’s also the Founder of Never Not Creative, a non-profit focused on support and better outcomes for creatives, and the Co-Chair of Mentally-Healthy.org. Ultimately, he’d just like to see everyone in the creative industry, enjoy their work, be treated well and be healthy and happy – can’t be too much to ask, right?

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