How Agencies in Europe Prepared for the Return to Office

The need to protect employees when requiring them to be present in the office is a tightrope to walk when it comes to health and safety during this pandemic, an issue human resources (HR) departments and managers will have for the foreseeable future. Agencies have spent months preparing for the return to office life and planning to ensure staff are happy to return, even to some degree. The great resignation/talent war taking place is definitely on the minds of agency chiefs as they bring their teams back. According to research released by Forrester in mid-October, next year will see almost two-thirds (60%) of European billion-dollar companies that have aimed to shift to hybrid work models designing “employee experiences” such as promotion opportunities, meetings and new jobs around face-to-face experiences. It also predicted that half of those companies would introduce vaccine mandates which would lead to complications, however, those would not be the main reason that such strategies will fail. “The biggest takeaway from the entire pandemic has been that employees have experienced the benefits of home working and you can't put this genie back into the bottle,” outlined Forrester’s principal analyst Dan Bieler. The pull back to office life has begun There will be disruption. Rumors in Europe’s “Adland” have begun circulating that some agencies are already telling staff that starting in January they will return to the office on a full-time basis. So how will HR departments and managers improve that working experience from before? Some will adopt new technology while others will continue to introduce practices to maintain mental health and productivity. “Fostering a strong learning culture is one of our key success factors,” says Serviceplan’s head of transformation, Karin-Maria Schertler, adding that it has also expanded its “campus program” of over 200 training events a year, with a focus on digital formats to make them available anywhere. There are moments in time where people need to come together as a collective to be collaborative, to be creative. Aliya Vigor-Robertson, co-founder of JourneyHR “Before Covid we had implemented standard software solutions to cater for our mobile office and hybrid collaboration needs,” she says, citing Microsoft Teams, presentation app Menti and whiteboard tool Miro as three examples. “The focus now lies on a seamless workflow tool to connect our offices.” And with a focus on both retention as well as staff recruitment, the business is also concentrating on empowering its internal communications directors to produce a useful dialogue. Schertler continues to add that each agency and office is working to different regulations, with its HR team service in an advisory role for each. “We need to be much aware of the fact that one size doesn’t fit all,” Schertler states. A focus on culture Culture is key to ensuring that employees want to return to the office too, explains Aliya Vigor-Robertson, co-founder of consultancy JourneyHR which works with agencies such as the7stars, Bountiful Cow, advertising membership body the IPA and at one point Vice. She says that the7stars, which employs around 250 people, has “nailed it” in terms of how it has looked after its workforce, explaining that it has connected “their values and floated around this concept of freedom.” Returning to the office will include new rules and expectations. She explains of the concept of “freedom” is that the company does not structure itself around job titles and a limited number of annual holidays which has become part of the "return to work" strategy. Vigor-Robertson says the uncertainty over the rise and fall of the virus spread has created a “backwards and forwards” momentum for businesses but it has given employees the freedom to decide if they want to come into the office should they need a change of scenery if it’s safe. That “freedom” to decide has helped, she believes. Striking a balance between business and people With a smaller number of people returning to offices/working in real life full time at once, some agency groups have taken the opportunity to move their agencies together under one roof—for example, IPG and MSQ Group, both in London, signifying a long-term commitment to part-time in-office hours. WPP has also moved VMLY&R into its London HQ, with a second campus of agencies set to open nearby on the banks of the Thames. Richard Morris, chief executive of IPG Mediabrands, says he spends more time than ever talking to his HR team and that the company believes that people’s motivation has suffered while working from home over the last two years. He explains that from January next year there will be a company mandate that hybrid working will be the norm, even with the office fully open. That communication started in November and will encourage staff to embrace the hybrid system being implemented permanently. “If someone says ‘Well, you know, I'm doing a perfectly great job, can I work from home five days?’ Yes, at some point, that's fine. But we think that [for] habit forming, we've got to swing back to 50/50 and get that in the muscle and rhythm of the agency,” Morris adds. This includes new recruits who are already being hired who will come in three days a week. We've got to swing back to 50/50 and get that in the muscle and rhythm of the agency.Richard Morris, chief executive of IPG Mediabrands With over 1,000 people in the business, line managers will be the core area that handles day-to-day management of where staff work, not HR directly, and there are three metrics that Morris will focus on to monitor progress—client satisfaction, people motivation and the profit and loss numbers. “Our belief is that if we have happy people, they drive happy clients and we make money,” Morris explains adding that there will be continual reviews and if just one of those metrics doesn’t work then “we have to intervene.” Another policy that will be introduced within IPG Mediabrands will be to allow people every quarter to work for up to two weeks in a “non-commutable distance from their office.” However, that will also be monitored closely. Agencies Are Finding Themselves Reevaluating the Purpose of an Office Morris reveals that further support will come through the introduction of Adecco technology, enabling people to monitor who is in the office as well as when. Audio and visual equipment has also been installed to improve town hall and meeting experiences for those tuning in remotely. “The meeting rooms are designed so that the people feel like they're in the room and not at some disadvantage because they're not there. And that's going to be difficult. That is going to be difficult getting that right. But we've invested in the technology to make it feel that it's remote/ in real life-neutral,” he adds. Our agency heads are absolutely empowered to make the right decisions for their peopleKate Howe, executive director of MSQ Partners. Meanwhile, MSQ Partners, which owns agencies such as IAS Stein, Smarts, The Gate, TwentySix and others is also bringing its London-based teams together into a new office in Covent Garden. The network has human resources function within each of the agencies as well while the business has also hired a new HR leader at group level too—a new role—having previously outsourced that requirement. This role was created due to the growth of the business over the last two years rather than due to the pandemic, though, and will also be expected to lead the growth of diversity, equality and inclusion across MSQ as well. “Our model is not a command and control model… we don’t have a one size fits all policy," says Kate Howe, executive director of MSQ Partners. Staff returning to offices will expect to be kept safe. Currently, the business has a variety of expectations across the agencies with “anchor days” set when teams are expected to attend the office one day a week at the discretion of their manager with employees allowed to come in when they choose to outside of that. Within that, some managers have asked their team to attend three days a week. The new office allows for hot-desking and various meeting spaces with clients also asking to come in and work from it. Another element of support comes from the company’s employee assistance program within its health care insurance that offers 24/7 support alongside support resources and information on work/life assistance with webinars or mental wellbeing courses through an app. “Our belief is that our agency leaders know their people, and most importantly, know what their clients need better than we possibly could, and better than anyone else. So, our agency heads are absolutely empowered to make the right decisions for their people and do the right thing and to flex that as they need to,” outlines Howe who adds that she is yet to learn of anyone in the business who has needed assistance. “There are moments in time where people need to come together as a collective to be collaborative, to be creative,” says Aliya Vigor-Robertson pragmatically of the need for office working, especially when it comes to onboarding new team members and helping to develop younger members. “It's very hard for a new joiner to join remotely and then turn up to an office and nobody's there. There are moments in time that are very impactful for us to be together, and we need to identify those moments and then come up with a plan to work around them.” How to Win the Challenge of the 'Great Reassessment'