The Billable Hours vs. Well-being Trap
For the next few weeks I’m writing about what it’s actually like being an HRBP in a creative agency. Since that’s my bread and butter, so to speak.
Not the glossy version. The real version.
The tensions, the trade-offs, the problems that don’t have clean solutions. If you work in an agency or you’re curious about what makes this environment different, this is for you.
I had an account director come to me recently and she was worried. One of her best designers is at 110% utilization for the third month in a row. Billing nearly every hour of every week, plus some. The metrics were what we strive for. Having employees billable and fully utilized.
But the designer is clearly struggling. Exhausted. Snapping at teammates. Missing details they’d normally catch. Talking about needing a break but not taking one because there’s too much work.
I ask the obvious question. “Can we reduce their workload?”
The account director looks at me like I suggested we just stop doing all client work. “They’re billable. We need them on client work. That’s how the business runs.”
And that’s the trap. The thing that makes the agency profitable is the same thing that’s burning people out.
Creative agencies run on billable hours. Generally, the more hours your team bills to clients, the more revenue you generate. And in other cases, where you’re on a retainer, it’s more about capacity within the business. Regardless of the model, utilization rates are the metric that matters. High utilization with 100% billability means you’re efficient, profitable, running a tight ship.
But creatives burn out fast when they’re constantly “on the clock.”
There’s no built-in recovery time. No space between projects. No room to think or explore or recharge. Just client work. Back to back. Week after week. Until someone breaks.
I’ve watched designers go from excited about the work to exhausted and resentful in six months. Not because the work itself was bad. Because there was too much of it without any breathing room.
The challenge isn’t just workload. It’s that billable hours incentivize the exact behavior that leads to burnout. Fill every hour. Stay busy. Keep your utilization high. Because that’s what the business needs.
And when someone’s utilization drops because they need recovery time or want to work on internal projects or just need space to think, it shows up as a problem in the numbers. They’re “underutilized.” Which sounds like they’re not pulling their weight, even when the reality is they’re trying not to collapse.
From my perspective, this creates an impossible situation for HR. Leadership wants sustainable performance and low turnover. But they also want high utilization. And you can’t always have both.
When you optimize for billable hours without accounting for well-being, your best people burn out and leave. Not the mediocre ones who coast. The high performers who care about the work. They’re the ones billing 100%+ because they’re good and clients want them. They’re also the ones who hit their limit first because they’ve been running at over capacity for too long.
When they leave, you lose institutional knowledge, client relationships, and the talent that was actually driving the work. Then you scramble to replace them, which takes months and costs significantly more than it would have cost to just manage their workload better in the first place.
Quality drops before people leave. The designer who’s exhausted starts making mistakes. The copywriter who’s overworked turns in decent work instead of great work. Clients notice. They don’t always say something, but they do notice. And eventually, they start asking for different team members or they leave for another agency.
Team morale suffers. When one person is consistently at 95% utilization, everyone else sees it. They see that person struggling. They see leadership doing nothing about it. And they start wondering when it’s going to be them. It creates anxiety across the team, even for people who aren’t currently drowning.
I watched an agency lose three senior creatives in four months. All cited burnout. All had been billing over 100% for extended periods. Leadership was shocked each time. But from where I sat, it was completely predictable. The metrics had been screaming that these people were overworked. We just weren’t set up to do anything about it because billable hours were the priority and the only way we could support our business.
(Side note to this experience: This happens often, and what I usually see is a creative leaving because they are burnt out, but going to another large agency or holding company. They are told things are better at the new company. Told they have better perks. Promised more money. In the end, it ends up being the same. The faces may change, but the agency model is the same. No matter what spin you put on it.)
So why does this keep happening?
The business model demands it. Agencies make money by selling time. The more time you sell, the more money you make. High utilization isn’t just a goal, it’s survival. When utilization drops, revenue drops. And when revenue drops, there’s pressure to cut costs, which usually means cutting people, which makes utilization problems worse for everyone who’s left.
Leadership often comes from account or business backgrounds. They understand client relationships and P&L. They don’t always understand the creative process or how burnout builds. To them, 95%+ utilization looks like efficiency. They don’t see the person behind the number who’s about to break.
There’s no clear benchmark for “too much.” In other industries, you might have clear standards. Manufacturing has safety limits. Healthcare has maximum shift lengths. Agencies have... nothing. So we’re making it up as we go, and usually defaulting to “as much as possible until something breaks.”
Recovery time isn’t billable. If someone takes a day to work on internal projects or just recharge, that’s lost revenue from a P&L perspective. Which creates pressure to minimize non-billable time, even when that time is what keeps people functional long-term.
Here’s what I think needs to change. Agencies need to build recovery into how they operate, not treat it as an exception when someone’s about to quit.
Start by redefining what sustainable utilization actually looks like. It’s not 95%+. It’s probably not even 85%. From my experience, when people consistently bill above 80% for extended periods, you start seeing quality drop and burnout increase. That doesn’t mean 80% is the magic number for everyone, but it’s a starting point for asking whether someone’s workload is sustainable.
Have regular conversations about workload that go beyond utilization numbers. Sit down with people and actually ask how they’re doing. Not in a performative “how are you” way, but genuinely. Are they sleeping? Are they able to disconnect? Do they feel like they have any control over their schedule? Do they have time to do good work or are they just churning through tasks?
Build non-billable time into expectations. Internal projects. Learning. Exploration. Whatever makes sense for the role. But make it explicit that this time matters and isn’t just “nice to have when we’re slow.” Because if it only happens when you’re slow, it never happens.
Create circuit breakers for high utilization. If someone’s been above 85% for two months, that triggers a conversation. Not a “what’s wrong with you” conversation. A “how do we adjust your workload” conversation. Maybe you staff them differently on the next project. Maybe you bring in another team member to absorb some of the work. Maybe you just acknowledge they need a lighter month and plan for it.
Think about it like this. A senior designer has been at 90% utilization for six weeks. Instead of celebrating their productivity, their manager flags it. They sit down together and look at what’s coming. They identify that the next project would push them even higher. So they bring in a mid-level designer to take some of the execution work, letting the senior designer focus on the strategic pieces that actually need their expertise. Utilization drops to 75% for the next month. The work still gets done. The designer doesn’t burn out.
That’s not complicated. But it requires valuing sustainability over maximizing every billable hour. And it requires leadership seeing high utilization as a warning sign, not just a win.
You already know who on your team is overworked. You can see it in the utilization reports. You can see it in how they look and how they’re performing.
The question is whether you’re going to do something about it before they burn out and leave. Or whether you’re going to keep optimizing for billable hours until you lose the people who make those hours valuable.
The business model doesn’t have to destroy people. But it will if you let utilization be the only metric that matters.
What does sustainable utilization actually look like in your agency? And are you measuring it, or just hoping people can keep up?