Only 9% of comms pros want agency life. That's a disaster - here's why it matters

If you lead an agency, that statistic should stop you in your tracks. Nine percent. That's the proportion of communications professionals who actively want to build a career in agency life. Everyone else would rather be somewhere else.

We've been placing senior communications talent for nearly 30 years, and the pipeline problem has never felt quite so acute.

How did we get here?

It's been a slow burn. But here's the important detail: agencies aren't just losing people to other agencies. They're losing them to in-house teams - and that's where they're staying. The direction of travel is clear, and it goes one way. As in-house employers continue to attract increasingly strong talent, the pool available to agencies gets smaller, more selective, and harder to reach.

I can put a number on this. When we approach ten senior communications professionals about an agency move, we might get one who's genuinely open to it. And that one person will be extremely specific about what they want: the size of the agency, the client mix, the culture, the leadership, the flexibility, the money. Agencies are fishing in a very small pool. They can advertise roles, but at mid-to-senior level, advertising is rarely how great people get found.

Squeezed margins led to smaller teams. Smaller teams meant heavier workloads. Heavier workloads without the pay to match sent people searching for the exit. Data from our latest Salary Guide shows that 63% of agency professionals are currently considering a job move in 2026. That's over half a team eyeing up the door at any one time - and that number puts real pressure on senior leadership to think hard about what they're doing on retention, not just recruitment.

The external environment isn't helping. From April 2025, UK employers’ National Insurance contributions rose from 13.8% to 15%. For agencies operating on tight margins with people-heavy cost bases, that's a genuine additional pressure, and it makes the maths of replacing leavers with more senior, better-paid talent considerably harder. Alongside that, AI is changing the way work gets done - disrupting some roles, supporting others - adding another layer of uncertainty for people thinking about where they want to build a career.

What agency professionals actually want

Salary sits at the top of the priority list for both in-house and agency professionals, and it's essentially equal across both sectors. So the battle for agency talent is being fought and lost everywhere else.

Culture, flexibility, financial security, career trajectory. In-house employers consistently offer stronger benefits packages: enhanced pensions, paid sick leave, better health coverage. "I'm not leaving for a title bump - I'm leaving because I want an employer who actually looks after my health, not just my output," was one Salary Survey participant's response that stayed with me.

Agencies do lead on hybrid working and mentoring, but as return-to-office mandates spread across banking and professional services, even that edge may not last.

Is smaller and better the answer?

Some agency leaders are already making a deliberate pivot: fewer people, more senior, better paid, more specialist. It's a model that management consultancies and law firms have used for years - transparent pay structures, genuine profit-share, clear routes to the top rather than vague promises of progression.

Agency has always had incredible talent, but it needs to act more like it knows that. The firms doing this well are investing in senior hires, being honest about pay, and positioning agency as a genuine career destination - not a training ground for in-house."

What agencies can do now

There are some concrete places to start. If you have the ability as an independent consultancy to offer consistent bonuses, do it - not a discretionary payment that disappears when times get tight, but something people can plan around. If profit-share is within reach, it will genuinely support retention in a way that most other levers can't.

Take a hard look at your people development programmes. One of the most common reasons senior professionals leave is that they no longer feel they're growing - they're uninspired by the work, or by their leadership team, or by where they can see themselves in three years. That's a fixable problem, but only if you take it seriously before someone hands in their notice.

Be transparent about pay banding. Build proper senior leadership development. And invest in telling your own story - not just what you do, but what it genuinely feels like to work there. The agencies winning the talent battle aren't only fixing what's broken. They're making a more compelling, affirmative case for what agency life offers: variety of clients, the pace at which you build expertise across sectors, the creative problem-solving that's genuinely harder to replicate in-house. These aren't consolation prizes. For the right people, they're the whole point. Own them.

The bottom line

The talent pipeline won't fix itself. But the agencies that take this seriously now - on retention, on development, on how they present themselves to the market - will be in a far stronger position in three years' time.

If you'd like to talk through your hiring strategy or executive search needs, get in touch. Our 2026 Salary Guide and Benefits Guide are now available - drop us a line to find out more.

To download our full Annual Salary Guide 2026, click here.

Time for a change? Check out our latest jobs.