Rebekah Pickett, General Manager at Melbourne Social Co
Everyone in agency land is saying the same thing right now: talent is hard to find, retention is harder, and burnout is everywhere. But if we’re being honest, a lot of the conditions driving that burnout haven’t actually changed, so why are we surprised?
Long hours are still worn as a badge of honour, chaos is still passed off as creativity, and high turnover is still quietly accepted as part of the model. The reality is, this isn’t a talent problem, it’s a systems problem.
When good people keep leaving, it’s rarely because they can’t do the job; it’s because the way agencies are structuring roles and workflows makes it unsustainable.
Burnout isn’t a personal failure
There’s still a narrative in our industry that burnout comes down to the individual, that people need to be more resilient or better at managing pressure.
In reality, most people in agencies are already high performers; they’re proactive, adaptable and genuinely care about doing great work for their clients.
What many are missing is an environment that actually supports them to thrive. One that allows space for creativity to flourish while also empowering them through clear, structured roles and strong leadership focused on driving success.
People do their best work when they feel trusted to take ownership, contribute ideas and step outside the box, but that only happens when the fundamentals are in place.
It’s a fine balance.
Agencies need the right level of process and structure to support what is often a fast-moving, high-pressure environment, while also allowing enough flexibility in ways of working to adapt and pivot in ways that suit individuals and the business’s needs at the time.
Longer lead times and the right level of resourcing are also essential to support the ebbs and flows of agency work, but that isn’t always possible with quick deadlines, fast turnaround expectations, cash flow challenges, or when teams simply don’t have the capacity to absorb that demand sustainably.
The hidden cost of “creative chaos”
There’s a long-standing belief in creative industries that structure limits creativity, but in practice, it’s usually the opposite.
When operations are messy, creativity is the first thing to suffer because teams spend more time reacting than thinking, and the space needed for strong ideas to flourish simply isn’t there.
While juggling multiple clients, deadlines and disciplines is part and parcel of agency life, it’s still critical to define and streamline roles where possible. This gives people the framework to take ownership, feel empowered, and ultimately perform at a higher level without being overloaded.
Without that clarity, people end up doing a bit of everything without truly owning anything, which ultimately leads to burnout and a decline in quality of work.
Unclear roles and unrealistic workloads
Two of the biggest drivers of churn I see are a lack of role clarity and workloads that are too diverse or too full to tackle all elements properly.
When roles aren’t clearly defined, accountability becomes blurred, and the people who are proactive or more senior naturally pick up more, not because they should, but because there’s no clear structure in place.
At the same time, people can be spread too thin across too many areas, which means even if the workload looks manageable on paper, it doesn’t feel that way in reality.
Over time, this creates imbalance across teams, an unsustainable way of working, and ultimately contributes to burnout.
What sustainable agency growth actually looks like
Sustainable growth isn’t about scaling as quickly as possible; it’s about growing in a way that your systems and your team can actually support.
That means aligning sales with delivery capacity and team skill sets, being clear about the true cost of delivering your work, and building the right structures early rather than waiting for things to break.
It also means designing roles intentionally as the business grows to support evolving needs, rather than letting them form reactively.
It requires looking beyond revenue as the only measure of success.
Retention, team engagement and culture, quality of work and client outcomes all play a role in whether a business is truly performing well.
The agencies that get this right aren’t the ones running the hardest; they’re the ones where things run clearly, where teams feel supported and where creativity has the space to do what it’s meant to do.
It’s time to rethink the model
The churn-and-burn culture that’s defined parts of the agency world for years isn’t inevitable; it’s the result of how businesses have been set up and managed.
For too long, high turnover has been accepted as “just agency life” rather than recognised as a signal that something isn’t working.
One of the hardest parts of running an agency is balancing resourcing while maintaining a commercially viable business, ensuring you’re not carrying too much excess capacity, while still being ready for new work as it lands.
Because of that, agencies need to be more disciplined in how they analyse current and forecast capacity, quality and output, and invest in strong operational foundations that can support the natural peaks and pressure of agency life.
This isn’t just a resourcing issue; it’s a planning and operational discipline issue.
If the industry wants to retain great talent, that mindset needs to shift.
Leaders need to move away from the idea that chaos is part of the craft and start treating operations as a core driver of performance, retention and long-term business success.