When Returning to the Office, Keep Some of Those Work-From-Home Elements Alive

Editor’s note: This piece is part of our Columnist Network series, which explores the tactical thoughts and actions from Adweek’s community of high-level experts. Today, Evelyn Rusli—co-founder, president and CMO of Yumi—surveys her network of brand marketers on their own pathways back to the office. With back-to-work-ish upon us, many companies are hurriedly drafting their new normal. While a few are planning to revert to the pre-pandemic office, most are contemplating a hybrid model or—for the truly bold—a fully distributed office. Spotify announced it is officially a “Work from Anywhere” company, while Facebook is giving employees a choice to get approval to stay remote or come in at least half of the time. Either way, for many of us, the office as we know it is dead, and whatever's left is a bit messy. Some teams, like engineering, thrive in the distributed model, but it can be especially tough for departments that rely on constant creative brainstorming and whiteboarding, e.g., the marketing department. After more than a year, there’s little consensus on how to maintain culture or creative collaboration in our digital-first offices. In recent weeks, I’ve been pinging founder friends and marketing leaders to hear their war stories. What worked? What didn’t? And what will they bring into this new normal? Of those polled, 0% are going back to the office full time, and, yes, for those wondering, a few have added athleisure to the list of approved in-office attire. When remote, help employees break the Zoom cycle “Creative work requires that folks take time to think and take time for breaks. We instill in our team that work shouldn’t be an endless cycle of emails and Zoom meetings; we encourage them to get away from their desks to think through ideas and concepts. The majority of our team are women, and many are parents, so during a time when there has been that added expectation at home to be present for our kids, I am glad that our business model naturally alleviated some of that pressure.” —Brittany Stewart, co-founder and COO, Burst A vote for hybrid “I think the best approach for the future is a hybrid one where cross-functional and codependent teams are in the office a few days per week together to connect, ideate, strategize and align—while spending a few days at home to get the work done. It's extremely hard to recreate that creative spark and engaging whiteboard sessions virtually, where you can sit and riff with your team, throw up some ideas on the wall and expand upon them to bring them to life in the marketplace. You don't get that feeling of inspiration or creativity through a screen. That being said, looking at the glass half full since Covid, it allowed us to showcase increased productivity and individual value and contribution to the business, working from home. We didn't skip a beat. So … there is a need for it in some capacity, so that team members can focus on tactical projects and business outcomes without the noise of an in-office environment.” —Rebecca Traverzo, vp, marketing, ThirdLove Create space for less structured creativity “It's definitely a challenge to recreate the magic of an in-person brainstorm virtually, but I've been pleasantly surprised by how inspiration can spark in unexpected places. Our team often shares what they are doing or seeing in their daily lives on Slack, which encourages ideas and reactions. A random prompt asking everyone what they're making for dinner ended up sourcing a food recipe we used in our newsletter that popped with engagement.” —Nitasha Ranganath, CMO, Haus “It's required us to digitally recreate a lot of the creative serendipity that inspires us daily—the 'small stuff' that actually serves as a strong foundation for a lot of our best marketing ideas. For example, our marketing team has multiple Slack channels that aren't really specifically work-related—we have a channel for sharing TikToks we love, a link dump channel for sharing non-Omsom and non-food related reads we find entertaining, etc.” —Kim Pham, co-founder, Omsom Brainstorm and plan—with intention “To keep everyone aligned as plans evolve, our team checks in on production calendars day-to-day through Slack, email and recurring calls. Making things 'virtual' has presented some surprises. For example, virtual photo shoots can be very productive, while virtual brainstorms fell flat. So we modified brainstorms. I now present strategic tentpoles at six-month, three-month and one-month time frames ... The team takes a few days to do individual brainstorming, then we come back together for group ideation to present our ideas, narrow them down, refine and put them into production. Because things change so quickly, we've also set up bimonthly calendar reviews to ensure any new information is noted. We've had to work smarter to make up for the ease 'in person' offers us, but we've been able to scale the brand and the team, onboard new agency partners and continue to meet our customers where they are in meaningful ways.” —Denise Woodard, founder and CEO, Partake Foods “There were two people on our marketing team in 2020—now there are 13. We have experimented with a lot of ways to drive creative brainstorming. Our cross-functional squads have daily stand-ups to discuss what each member is working on and solicit feedback. We have a weekly cross-functional meeting where we swarm on a topic; anyone is invited, and one of our teams starts with the problem we’re trying to solve and leads the group through a creative exercise. We had a team fly out to Atlanta to safely meet with members of our community and film content to share with our team so people continue to feel connected to our community. We have demos every other week to showcase what each team has recently launched. In every all-hands, we carve out room for AMA so any team member can bring up a question or suggestion, which helps promote transparency, creativity and openness of our culture.” —Melody McCloskey, CEO and co-founder, Styleseat Consider keeping some WFH traditions alive “Admittedly, we haven't figured out the hacks just yet, but we’re trying a few different options, with most of them including/incorporating an in-person, physical element. We’re also eliminating any false sense of a dress code and just owning up to the fact that sweatpants and ripped T-shirts are the new business casual.” —Robbie Salter, founder, Jupiter