As 2023 Looms, Holding Companies’ Return to Office Plans Are Clouded in Uncertainty

Agency executives want their people back in the office. They would rather not waste away their real estate—which has been redesigned to accommodate collaborative work—but they also don’t want people who prefer working from home to resign in protest. Every major holding company has told Adweek that it hasn’t issued an official mandate in writing across its entire network, but multiple sources across the holding companies tell Adweek they’re facing pressure to go back at least three days a week. The conversation is no longer about whether agencies that still have offices should encourage hybrid work—it’s about what exactly hybrid work means, to what extent it should be enforced and who gets an exemption. Meta 2022 Diversity Report: Remote Work Leads to a More Diverse Workforce “We are asking that all offices and operations insist on a return to the physical office space for a minimum of three days a week,” Alex Lubar, global president and COO of DDB Worldwide, an Omnicom company, wrote in a memo to the company in early December. While DDB is going with a rigid approach, Omnicom said its corporate policy is a “flexible, hybrid model” and is leaving it up to each agency to figure out what that means. WPP said it was not instituting a company-wide mandate and will let individual agencies decide what’s best for their businesses and people. According to an email from Mark Read obtained by Adweek, WPP has announced that headquarter employees are expected to “work with their colleagues in (their) campuses and offices at least three days a week.” WPP could not offer any guidance to Adweek on how it will be enforced and who gets exemptions. Read’s mandate impacts employees working on cross-agency teams who service some of WPP’s larger clients. By coming into the office, many of those employees still won’t be sitting face-to-face with their closest team members who are scattered across the network. “Of course, for some markets, teams and roles, more than three days on-site with colleagues is needed and in many cases this is already the norm,” Read said in the memo. Publicis says it is encouraging a hybrid model without instructing its agency leaders to “count days in the office,” and instead push for meaningful time together in-person, which could be at the office, with clients or industry events. Publicis told Adweek last week that there will not be a corporate mandate at the group level, believing that there is not a "one size fits all approach" to managing a network of agencies and their employees’ needs. However, it is recommending that several areas of business should incorporate three days per week in the new year. One agency that has issued a mandate is Publicis Health, which is expecting its employees to be in the office more often than not. The agency’s CEO, Alexandra von Plato, told the agency via a Vimeo video that employees would be required to come back to the office three days a week. “It’s time to reclaim the spontaneity and the energy that we lost,” she said. “In 2023, let’s roll up our shirt sleeves, open up our hearts and minds and be part of inventing the future of work together.” She continues that while “everyone” will be required to be in the office three days a week, there will be exceptions. Von Plato did not explain in the video what would qualify an exemption and if or how attendance would be tracked. Back in September, Publicis Media issued a memo, which Adweek obtained, that told employees they should be returning to office two days per week beginning Oct. 3 and three days per week in the New Year. Multiple sources told Adweek at the time it wasn’t being enforced as the agency recognized it needed to give employees time to adjust their living situations to account for commutes and childcare. Agencies are taking a closer look at how office attendance should and will impact their budget. Stagwell said it wants its employees to be “together more than (they’re) apart,” but flexibility policies range from agency to agency. GALE has embraced a two days per week model in its New York office and has outgrown its original space, and other Stagwell shops are still reevaluating what they need. IPG CEO Phillipe Krakowsky is taking a similar approach—he told Adweek he wants to “push harder against rethinking what new ways of working are,” encouraging a hybrid model while giving his agencies autonomy. Notably, two IPG agencies, Huge and R/GA, have already downsized their physical office spaces to embrace a remote-friendly workforce. Dentsu has not responded to Adweek’s request for comment at the time of publication, but multiple sources have told Adweek that Dentsu is embracing a remote-friendly workforce and most offices within the network haven’t been pressuring employees back. Employees will migrate for policy alignment Gupta Media, an independent performance marketing agency based in Boston, has instituted an “office first with flexibility” model, which the agency has used to get people back into the office at an average of four days a week. Head of People Kelly Heath says while the agency has lost some people, she is “actively recruiting people who want to be in person,” adding that she believes narratives around employees largely preferring remote work “predominates the news cycles.” “Our office environment is not for everybody, and that’s OK,” she said. “We wish those folks well and I’m sure they’ll find opportunities at other agencies.” Australian agency Howatson and Company has found great success in reminding people that in-person work is an option without nudging them to come in at all. Despite having no mandates, 75% of their employees are in the office on a regular basis, according to senior business manager Dede Stewart. “Our only policy is to work in a way that doesn’t impact your client or your colleagues,” she said.