Online Survey: (VERY) Preliminary Results

Some initial results are in. It appears that interactive agency managers are on an inevitable collision course. On the one hand, workers are working outside work hours regularly. On the other hand, they consider their home lives very important. I offer two data points in support of this contention.

First, an enormous share of respondents report working after hours regularly. Almost half do it more than once a week.


In sharp contrast to this, the vast majority of respondents say that the division between home and work is important, with more than half saying it's "very important":


There is a deep disconnect here. It's only a matter of time before one of these competing demands wins out. Considering the relative youth of these workers, managers may have a few years before it becomes a pressing problem.

But demographics tells us that every industry is in trouble for labour in the next few years. What are interactive agencies going to do about this disconnect? They will likely no longer have the luxury of just hiring another new grad to fill the shoes of a senior worker who shuffles off to client side in hopes of spending time with family.

Now the requisite research caveats: these results are fresh off the press with very little on my part. Also, not all of the data here represent interactive agency workers, but most of them do. I will strip out the non-interactive agency workers, and also do some cross tabulations to find potential patterns by job category, years of experience, or age.

The full results will likely take a bit longer. Stay tuned.