Stop Losing Your Best Women to Burnout

Written by Susan Horsburgh

Media leaders are breaking the burnout cycle by transforming their workplace cultures. By focusing on prevention as well as cure, these forward-thinking, female-friendly solutions are boosting team morale and retaining talent.

It can start with snippiness, sometimes extra sick days. She might begin acting out of character, maybe even take out her irritation on a colleague. “You can often observe it,” says Cara McLeod, the CEO of marketing and communications agency Mahlab, explaining the tell-tale signs of burnout. “It can come out in anger and frustration – people being short-fused. I’d always ask, ‘Are you sleeping?’ – because if you’re not sleeping well, you’re not doing anything else well. That’s one of the markers.”

It's a hard time for media, and many in the sector are bearing the brunt of stretched resources, disappearing boundaries and non-stop deadlines. “How do they sustain a profitable business with things like declining advertising and technological disruptions, as well as a more fragmented media landscape?” asks Cara, who became CEO in 2020, just weeks before the arrival of COVID-19. “There’s also this long tail of chronic stress, burnout and anxiety [from] the pandemic. We’ve lurched from one thing to the next in the external environment, and that’s contributing to how people are feeling about their lives and work.”

Women in Media research consistently highlights the impact of burnout: almost a third of those surveyed for the Industry Insight Report last year said they were thinking of resigning. In a 2024 Liptember Foundation study, burnout was cited as the top trigger for a decline in mental health among women in the workforce. Job insecurity, upskilling demands and long work hours in between unpaid caring duties and the mental load of the household all conspire to dial up the stress, especially for women.

Cara McLeod

It’s unsustainable, and often framed as a challenge to be solved by individual employees. But some employers are trying to address the causes as well as the symptoms. As Cara points out, Mahlab’s staff of 50 – the majority women – are the agency’s stock in trade: “It’s critically important for us to have our people at the top of their game, and wellbeing is all tied into it.”

That means Employee Assistance Programs, trained mental health first aiders, pulse checks and engagement surveys, but also managers knowing their team members, possibly giving employees one-on-one coaching or time off before they flame out. “We’ve even sent people on retreats,” says Cara, “when they might have had a particularly stressful experience, say a divorce or illness, that then impacts their work life.”

Perhaps most important of all is flexibility, which creates an atmosphere of trust and support. “Flexibility is baked into our agreements from the get-go,” says Cara, who was promoted at Mahlab both times she took maternity leave. The agency’s leadership team is mostly women, so they understand that some days for staff in their child-rearing years, “it's just going to be a shit show”. Employees have a hybrid working arrangement where they generally need to be available from 10am to 4pm, but can work their remaining hours when it suits them.

Marilla Akkermans has gone so far as to institute a four-day work week at her Melbourne agency, Equality Media + Marketing. This year, for the second time, the company has topped the AFR BOSS Best Places to Work list in the media and marketing category.

Marilla Akkermans

In 2022, Marilla was hunting for great staff but knew that a small, independent agency was not thought to be as secure as a global outfit, so she investigated people-centric policies that would attract talent. The company spent three months analysing its workload and finding efficiencies, cutting out unnecessary meetings and admin tasks, so Equality could usher in a four-day work week on top of its flexible hybrid policy.

When she founded the agency in 2018, Marilla drew on her own burnout experiences as an employee to engineer an environment she wanted to work in. She remembers how her perceived value plummeted when she returned from maternity leave and her requests for part-time work were rejected: “The doors that were open to me only 12 months earlier were pretty firmly shut.”

As the pandemic becomes a memory, Marilla has noticed companies swinging away from flexible working, and that rigidity too often rules out women. “There’s so much untapped potential in mothers, especially in the media industry, because people don’t truly value or appreciate a part-time worker,” says Marilla, who has just hired a woman who’s newly pregnant.

“A woman’s brain doesn’t die the day she becomes a mother, and her career aspirations don’t just fly out the window. We can be more than one thing.”

Paid for five days though they work for four, Equality’s 25-strong workforce are 90 percent women and range in age from 23 to 55. While the younger employees usually take a full day off, parents tend to use their bonus hours here and there to attend school assembly, for example, or kids’ sport.

The move has paid dividends, with a drop in sick leave, better productivity and employee wellbeing, and 90 percent staff retention. Marilla’s advice to employers who want to minimise burnout among their people? “Just remember what it feels like yourself,” she says. “In media, we’re people‐based, so your product and your profitability are going to suffer the more people are burning out. Everybody wins when you care properly about your people.

“It’s really hard to do when you’re in tough times. We went through that two years ago, but I knew we had to hold on to our people because the market would pick up again. Without sounding too woo-woo, we’re all here to have a life – not to work our guts out and drop dead at 67 when we get to retire. You’ve got to try to find the balance – to retain your people and really respect them.”