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Media agency churn at 33.2 per cent as MFA moves to ‘regrettable loss’ turnover measure

MFA updated logoThe churn rate among media agencies belonging to industry body the Media Federation of Australia (MFA), hit 33.2 per cent in 2014, a new survey has found.

The result is up on the last publicly released MFA data set for 2012 which showed turnover among media agencies at 30 per cent.

The body chose to move to a new metric in its 2o14 assessment, breaking down the churn rate into “regrettable loss” and “non-regrettable loss”.

According to an infographic summarising the new annual MFA Census and Salary Survey report regrettable loss, which last year was 26.8 per cent, is defined as generally staff moving to another competitor media agency, while non-regrettable loss is staff who left media agencies altogether, last year at 6.4 per cent. Under the old metric, by adding the two together, the combined industry churn rate would have been 33.2 per cent.

Source: MFA

Source: MFA

Asked about the decision not to release one overall churn rate, as has been done previously, MFA CEO Sophie Madden said: “In order to be consistent with similar international industry census data points and after consultation with Great Places to Work and PwC, we are now releasing ‘regrettable loss’ as the most relevant turnover data point.  

“This seems to be the data point that everyone else uses and we wanted to be able to compare to other markets and industries for our members.”

This year’s result comes after last year’s MFA’s Census and Salary Survey was leaked to the trade press and showed the churn rate across media agencies in 2013 was 33.5 per cent, marginally above the 2014 figure. In the wake of the leak the industry body declined to be drawn on the results arguing the report was confidential.

“There was no reason behind not publishing the data last year,” said Madden. “This is the first year that we are sharing industry census data. The reason behind us sharing data now is that we have gathered more data about the profile of our industry and we think that it tells an interesting story.”

Other findings in the survey showed that 53 per cent of staff in MFA member media agencies have less than four years experience, with 24 per cent having five to nine years experience and 23 per cent having a decade or more experience.

The survey also claimed that the median age of staff within those member agencies was 29-years-old.

The MFA has declined to release the full MFA Census and Salary Survey report arguing it can only be shared with members who contributed to the report.

Nic Christensen 

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