Media Buying Briefing: ‘You can’t legislate uncertainty’: two agencies rethink return-to-office plans after employee pushback

By Michael Bürgi

Just when it looked like it was safe to go back to the office over the last few months, the delta variant of COVID-19 reared up and sent the number of cases, hospitalizations and even deaths spiraling back upward. That, of course, threw many companies’ return to work plans into disarray.

Two agency CEOs Digiday spoke with related their differing paths that led to the same destination — a significant number of employees who returned to work without being mandated to do so.

Barry Lowenthal, CEO of Stagwell Media Network’s Media Kitchen, had every intention of mandating that everyone return to the office three days a week and give them two days of flexibility on where they work, effective this September. Then he and his management team ran into a wall of pushback, facing questions of how and why that decision was reached.

That pushback led to a self-examination of sorts, where Lowenthal said he realized the situation was better handled from a team-up perspective rather than a top-down management style. Lowenthal admitted he grew up in the Jack Welch/Peter Drucker era of management style, which was very top-down, decisive — and immovable. But the reaction of some staff, coupled with the lessons learned from working from home — that it can be done successfully — led him to change his perspective.

“It’s really hard to legislate uncertainty,” he said. “I’ve always been a believer that if you’re pushing water uphill, it’s probably better to just let it roll the way it’s supposed to. These are all management signals we all should be listening for.”

Lowenthal said he found inspiration in The Media Kitchen’s change in vacation policy a few years ago when the company allowed unlimited vacation and stopped tracking days off. At first, “it made some people uncomfortable at first, then found its own rhythm — the teams supported each other,” he said. “And if we trust them to take vacation when they need to, why can’t we trust them to work side by side as often as they need to? So we backed off” from its return to office mandate.

Meanwhile, Andrew Bailey, North American CEO of independent agency The&Partnership (in which WPP holds a minority stake), had been quietly encouraging his people back into the office since last October and implemented a voluntary three days in office, two remote since Memorial Day. To his surprise, a majority of his staffers did so willingly, up to 75% of the staff, he said. But he also found a certain segment resisted.

When looking into it, Bailey discovered that staffers in more collaborative roles (creative directors, account people and junior project managers, for example) were happy to come in, needing the interaction with colleagues that inspires innovation and fresh thought. The more reluctant segment were mostly media, IT and data/analytics staff, who “don’t have as much interaction with colleagues that requires face-to-face contact,” said Bailey.

Working to Bailey’s advantage was the extra office space The &Partnership opened in its Soho (New York) facilities eight …read more

Source:: Digiday