By Melissa Pezzello, Head of Client HR, Syzygy
I’ve heard every refrain about the job market you can think of, up and down, throughout my career. Most recently, however, I read cases about people who have found work and are navigating the hiring process, or have just started their jobs…and already have cold feet. “When is the right time to leave” the job they fought 9-12 months to land?
BLS Reports from 2025-26 show ad agency benchmarks of approximately 20–30% annual employee turnover, with workforce layoffs attributed to part of that figure. However, voluntary quits comprised 15-25 percent of agency turnover, which is significant and can damage an employer’s stability. The problem remains that many of these stories center around young people entering (and then leaving) the advertising workforce, which signals a massive case of talent bleed.
Managers and C-Suite executives are coached in talent retention and management as part of their training, but the HR leader is best positioned to intervene for employees on the ground floor. Most of that intervention comes in the form of defending their decisions (and modern employment laws) to managers and executive leaders. In so doing, HR can play a vastly undersung role in stemming advertising’s talent bleed.
For Gen Z, the youngest current workforce—but really, for any ongoing workforce—HR can mitigate talent turnover by championing pay transparency (for which the laws are becoming increasingly strict). They can define, and redefine, the stigma around “job hopping” and what it actually accomplishes for workers today. Leaders can stand to learn from HR what the speed of employee growth looks like at modern companies—a major impetus for job hopping, anyway—as well as how to manage employees that do or don’t want to move to management themselves.
Ultimately, even amidst these trends, young employees do want to stay at their jobs. Like moving from house to house, job transitions are stressful, and most don’t want to do them twice in under two years. However, the wrong conditions can drive even the most hungry employees to look elsewhere.
Show (Them) The Money
Focusing on young professionals, Gen Z wants well-being at their job. They also—shocker—want to be paid market rate. With transforming pay transparency laws, they are better able to learn what those rates are and ask for them at (almost) any time, and employers have to be well prepared to meet legal requirements if they want to retain top talent.
California employers with 15 or more employees, for example, must include their pay scale in job postings. Upon request, California also requires companies to provide an employee the pay scale for the position the employee currently holds. In New York, this threshold is only four employees, and applies to promotions and transfers as well. That means, in New York state (and companies should be aware of the laws in their own states), HR teams have to come prepared to justify a promoted employee’s pay rate if it doesn’t meet the top of their range. Employees can also ask their managers in both states where they fall within their role’s salary range, should they forget.
About Job Hopping…
To say nothing of employees who still leave. Increasingly, job hopping is considered as normal to Gen Z as stringent decades-long loyalty was to generations like Gen X and Baby Boomers. And to ensure they are being paid market rate, more and more Gen Z employees openly discuss their salaries with their peers (Newsweek). This is one of the ways companies quickly get exposed for pay inequity.
Even so, Gen Z wants to love where they work and will remain loyal to the best fit… but they refuse blind loyalty. To them, loyalty is earned by the employer, not granted immediately by the employee. Gen Z aims to develop their skills, be paid appropriately for their skills, earn legal benefits, and support fulfilling lives in and outside of work. No longer is the criteria for a fulfilling life, “make working at Company X my personal identity”. Another survey from earlier this year, also reported by Newsweek, revealed that Gen Z employees are avoiding applying for roles when the salary isn’t transparently listed.
I would be remiss not to point out that this is also a very Western perspective. While Gen Z workers worldwide are questioning job loyalty and what it truly means, the pace that young workers have shirked that yolk varies country by country. In some countries, long-term loyalty is still a deeply-rooted component of their culture.
And That’s Growth
As I mentioned, one component of talent bleed is financial, but the other is skill development—and the pace of said skill development. Gen Z wants to grow faster than counterparts of earlier generations, which is both a blessing and a curse. Millennials in their shoes, as the generations before them, were taught to keep their heads down and pay their dues. Gen Z workplaces don’t follow the same rulebook. The expectation I frequently hear from young workers is that they should be promoted within two years, max.
I love the enthusiasm! The last thing we should admonish is the urge to grow within an agency. The friction lies in the pace they expect against the availability of the roles they pursue. If young employees can learn faster, take on more responsibility and produce strong work sooner with advancements in work technology, then it makes sense that they may also expect their growth within an agency to move faster.
That’s not to say every employee needs a promotion after twelve months. Sometimes the role simply doesn’t exist yet, and creating titles just for retention purposes isn’t sustainable. But there are other ways to register progress, too. HR can work with managers on clearer paths for development, give employees opportunities to take on new responsibilities, encourage mentorship and have more frequent conversations about what advancement actually looks like.
The worst thing an agency can do is leave an ambitious employee guessing. If someone thinks they’re ready for the next step and keeps getting “maybe later” without knowing why, eventually another employer will give them a clearer answer.
The agencies that get it will have a major leg up as the next generation continues to shape the workforce. Pay people fairly. Tell them what they can expect. Give them opportunities to grow, even if the next title isn’t immediately available. Listen when HR raises concerns about what employees are really experiencing.
HR’s job is to support the company as well as the people who build it. Supporting both sides equally isn’t working against the business. In the long run, it may be one of the best ways to protect it.
