Did you know? The cost of uncontrolled turnover can be as high as 1.5 times the annual salary of the employee concerned (source: Gallup). And when it comes to agency talent – senior consultants, project managers, strategic creatives – the losses aren’t just financial: they’re cultural, commercial… sometimes even existential.
In 2025, retaining your best and brightest is no longer a matter of comfort, but a strategy of competitive survival. competitive survival. So, where do you start? Here are 5 concrete ways to strengthen your leadership and retain your nuggets. Spoiler: no, it’s not just about salary.
Rekindle the flame: give meaning to everyday life
A good salary attracts, but it’s not what keeps. What keeps a talent today is the feeling of contributing to something bigger than a retroplanning or a margin rate.
Do you have a vision for your agency? Great. But do your teams know it? Better still, are they connected on a daily basis?
Remember that “giving meaning” doesn’t mean reciting an agency mission statement during onboarding. It’s about linking each project, each customer challenge, to a collective dynamic. It means rewarding efforts and progress, and showing teams that their work has a measurable, visible and recognized impact.
A project manager who sees how his or her work contributes to the loyalty of a major account will be far more eager to invest than another lost between Trello, Excel and Slack.
Focus on transparency, not window dressing
In many agencies, visibility is like the open bar: it exists mainly in theory. Talents want to know where the agency is going, what its objectives, priorities and prospects are. And no, telling them “we’re aiming for +15% margin” isn’t enough.
Trust is born when information circulates.
In other words, the more transparent you are about reality – the successes, the difficulties, the trade-offs – the more committed your teams will be. This is not an admission of weakness: it’s a sign of managerial maturity.
Get into the habit of sharing regularly:
- Staffing prospects (upcoming projects, profiles sought)
- Lessons learned from key projects (successes and failures)
- Areas for development of your model (tools, processes, positioning)
A little effort at clarity can save a lot of silent departures.
Empower rather than control
Who wants to stay in an agency where every slide has to be validated by four levels of management? Spoiler: nobody. Today’s talents (and even more so those of tomorrow) flee micro-management like open-space flu.
Empower. It’s not about letting go in a limbo. It’s about creating a clear framework, setting concrete objectives, and then trusting them.
Take this example: a consulting manager can manage a portfolio of accounts provided he has a clear view of margins, future expenses and possible trade-offs. Give him this data, train him to use it, and let him breathe. The result? Tenfold commitment, increased skills… and fewer e-mails in Cc.
Develop your talents... without letting them go
How many employees have left for lack of prospects? Or worse: for lack of a frank discussion of their desires?
Building customer loyalty also requires individualized support. There’s no need for a 40-page HR plan: a few regular, sincere, structured conversations are often all it takes to come up with tailor-made solutions.
“She wanted to pilot a team? He wanted to move up to 4/5th? They wanted to learn about CSR strategy?”
Sometimes, you just have to ask the question. And really listen to the answers.
Remember to include :
- Non-linear career paths (not just “junior → senior → manager”)
- Visible internal opportunities (new accounts, new roles)
- Practical, applied, useful training sessions
Make your agency a place of experimentation rather than a one-way street.
Equip them intelligently (and show that you respect their time)
There’s nothing worse for a talent than wasting half a day filling in an Excel file, version 2012, for a load tracker that nobody really reads. Your best profiles don’t run away from effort. They flee suffered inefficiency.
In 2025, building loyalty also means investing in management tools that make work more fluid instead of complicating it. It’s offering a cockpit rather than a puzzle.
A good tool must :
- Provide visibility on projects and workloads
- Facilitate staffing and resource allocation
Centralize key data (profitability, lead times, time spent)
What if loyalty started with you?
As we all know, running an agency is often a balancing act between workload, profitability, recruitment and unforeseen customer events. So if a tool can help you better manage your teams and create a healthy, sustainable environment so why deprive yourself?
Furious is a platform designed for agency managers who want to retain their best talent… without losing their heads. Visibility, staffing, budget, profitability: everything is centralized, for fast, efficient decision-making.
Ask for your personalized demo and discover how Furious can become your best ally in managing your teams with clarity, efficiency… and a little more peace of mind.
