Anyone who’s spent time in the agency world has seen it firsthand: barriers to internal advancement and burnout force some of the company’s best talent to walk out the door each year. The industry turnover rate hovers around an astounding 27%.
Think about that: more than a quarter of your employees, your IP and your value, walk out the door every single year. How can any company expect to operate at its full potential when it essentially hits the reset button each year?
At the core of the issue is a lack of dedicated training and development programs aimed at keeping talent engaged, learning, and happy so they can demonstrate growth that is appropriately rewarded.
Among the countless agencies out there, it’s difficult to find one that offers much more than a modest education stipend to address this challenge. Operational costs, such as those necessary for comprehensive training programs, are often the first to get cut when economic pressures mount. This only exacerbates the issue, as persistent turnover further disrupts agency operations, leading to inefficiencies and increased costs.
At GALE, we’ve long believed that investing in our people is key to long-term success, benefitting our employees and the business alike. Since our second year, we’ve had a full-time career coach on staff to support employee development. This year, I’m proud to say we’ve allocated upwards of $1 million to training and development. It sounds like a lot, and indeed it is, but it’s one of the easiest decisions I’ve made for the business. Learning and development are critical components in hiring and retaining great people so we can do great work. This commitment through the years has helped us achieve an above-average retention rate of 86% while hiring more than 400 people in the past two years and promoting 120 people in 2023.
Yes, we also offer an education reimbursement stipend, dedicating $300,000 to it annually, but that’s just one component. Here are some other facets that set us apart:
- Dedicated Career Coaches: As our headcount has grown, we’ve scaled our career coaches to ensure personalized 1:1 coaching is available to every employee. These coaches assist our employees in setting Goals & Objectives, addressing career challenges, and providing guidance on how to utilize our company competency matrices to chart a path toward promotion.
- Internal Training Platform: We recently launched our own GALE training platform, continuously enriching it with lessons developed by our full-time dedicated training director. The content is bespoke to the GALE model, but also inclusive of industry-wide skills development (yes, it includes AI training). To ensure our employees feel empowered to work cross-domain and technical skills training into their work day, we allocate four training hours per month for every employee.
- Growing Our Own Talent: We designed a Media Accelerator Program to grow specialized media talent. Each year, we recruit a cohort to participate in three-week rotations across Paid Social, SEO, Paid Search and Programmatic with the guidance of a GALE mentor. We hired all 11 participants in 2023.
Our equation for success has long been Great People + Great Clients = Great Work. To hire and retain Great People, we must continue prioritizing learning and development as a key component of our agency’s offering. The industry as a whole would be much better off if more recognized its importance and did the same.
