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https://mumbrella.com.au/were-running-a-2026-industry-on-a-1926-household-the-bill-is-500m-a-year-926457>
"You’re 33. You work full time in advertising. You leave the house in the
morning, and while you’re gone, someone else is running the entire
infrastructure of your life. The shopping. The cooking. The school drop-offs.
The appointments.
That household is a system, designed around one person’s ability to go to work.
It’s also the household the modern workplace was built for. The year was 1926.
Today, that household doesn’t exist. Almost half the Australian workforce is
women. Most homes have two people working full time. Women are having their
first child closer to 30, right in the middle of their most career-formative
years. The invisible scaffolding that made the old model work disappeared
decades ago. The workplace barely moved.
Last month at Mumbrella360, I chaired a panel with three women who each work at
a different pressure point in our industry: Sive Buckley from The Aunties on
early-career talent; Lauren Thornborough from The Village on parents; and
Jacquie Alley from The Media Store on senior experience. Three career stages,
three sets of data, one conclusion. We do not have a talent shortage. We have a
retention problem. And the retention problem is the workplace itself.
At the front of the pipeline, Beyond Blue says 18–29-year-olds are reporting
the highest workplace burnout rates in the country. Sive sees it firsthand:
juniors arriving fluent in AI and audiences, handed busy work, no mentorship,
and middle managers who were rushed up the ladder in COVID and never taught to
lead.
“People aren’t leaving because the work is too hard,” she told the room.
“They’re leaving because they can’t see where it’s going.”
Our response, far too often, is ping pong tables and Friday drinks. As Sive put
it: people are sitting there thinking, when is the good bit?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
