- 42% of leaders in large UK professional services firms say burnout is their biggest retention challenge.
- 31% of UK leaders cite burnout or stress as a key reason they struggle to keep top performers.
- 86% of UK leaders believe their people are fully utilised, but only 69% have clear visibility into team-level capacity
Burnout has been on leadership agendas for years. What is changing is how clearly UK leaders are now connecting it to fairness, utilisation, and growth. New UK research from Dayshape,shows that retention challenges are driven by how work is planned, distributed, and sustained.
The findings come from ‘Inside the leadership growth agenda, a 2025 survey of 200 senior leaders at mid-to-large professional services firms across the UK. While firms continue to pursue growth in a demanding market, the data suggests a significant proportion of that growth is being undermined internally by blind spots in workload planning and capacity visibility.
Across UK professional services firms, 31% of leaders cite burnout or stress as one of their biggest challenges in keeping top performers. Burnout intensifies as firms scale. In large UK firms, 42% of leaders identify burnout as the single biggest retention challenge. Fairness is a central part of this picture, with 26% of leaders in large firms pointing directly to unfair workload distribution as a driver of attrition.
Burnout also sits within a wider cluster of internal pressures shaping retention decisions. External offers and poaching remain a significant factor, cited by 36% of UK leaders. However, internal experience rivals this pressure. 29% highlight a lack of flexibility and autonomy over workloads or poor management, while the same proportion point to a lack of development or progression opportunities. A quarter of leaders say staff are leaving the profession altogether, and 24% cite unfair workload distribution across the UK as a whole.
The impact of these pressures is already being felt commercially. 32% of UK leaders say talent shortages are holding back growth today. Alongside visible resignations sits a quieter but increasingly costly risk. Disengagement, reduced effort, and declining motivation are creating what many leaders now recognise as quiet attrition. People remain in role, but their contribution steadily erodes.
Matt Cockett, CEO of Dayshape, says: “Firms are underestimating the business risk. Growth strategies fail when they are built on exhausted teams and blind spots in planning. Fairness is no longer a soft issue. It sits at the heart of retention, performance, and long-term growth. What changes outcomes is whether workloads are fair, utilisation is realistic, and work is properly planned and sustainable over the long term. If the same people are always stretched while others are protected, no wellbeing initiative will fix that.”
The research highlights a clear disconnect between perception and reality. 86% of UK leaders believe their people are fully utilised, yet only 69% say leadership has clear visibility into team-level capacity. This 17-point gap allows uneven workloads, favouritism and busy work to persist, placing repeated pressure on the same high performers.
Over time, that pressure erodes autonomy, trust, and motivation. For professional services firms, the consequences are long term. High performers are future partners, leaders, and client anchors. Losing them weakens succession pipelines and increases strain on those who remain, accelerating burnout across teams.
Matt continued: “Fairness has shifted from a cultural aspiration to a strategic priority. When workload distribution is balanced and utilisation is treated as a holistic and important metric rather than a planning discipline, retention suffers and growth stalls. Leaders who invest in better visibility of resource capacity and future demand can spot pressure points earlier, rebalance work, and protect both people and performance as their motivation and morale is retained.
To read the report visit: https://dayshape.com/reports/leadership-growth-agenda-report-2025
About the research
The research, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Dayshape in August 2025, surveyed 400 senior leaders across professional services firms in the UK and US with more than 750 employees.
