How IPG Agency UM UK Views the Office Now and Improving Sustainability

Early in the Covid-19 lockdowns, questions of returning to the office typically revolved around proposed dates and mask protocols. But as the pandemic has continued through its second year, the nature of work has become a highly complex and potentially volatile topic at companies around the world. For many organizations, it’s no longer about a “return to normalcy.” It’s about defining a new normal—and finding the sometimes elusive balance between productivity and your team’s emotional well-being. That’s why Adweek is launching a regular interview series called Open Plan. In each Q&A, we’ll ask company leaders how they’ve changed the way they think about offices, remote work and the many transitions ahead. Want to suggest an executive for this series? Email me at stephen.lepitak@adweek.com. How Embracing Work Flexibility Has Proven ‘Absolutely Awesome’ for London Agency Elvis How has the pandemic changed how you view workplaces? The workplace has fundamentally changed since March 2020, and for the better. UM allowed flexible working pre-pandemic, so we like to think we were ahead of the curve, but the pandemic has reinforced what we already knew: that every single one of our people has the ability to work remotely both for the short term or the long term if it’s ever needed again. Our place of work is no longer as important as having the agility to flex to different situations and locations, and still get the job done. How have you changed the office environment since the pandemic started? We are eagerly awaiting a move into our new office, The Bailey, later this year, and our current offices have flexed to the government guidelines as they have changed over the months. Ultimately, nothing is more important to us than our employees’ safety. As such, we are still offering all staff the option to work remotely and, for those who do want to come to the office, we still have protocols in place to ensure our teams’ safety, with enhanced cleaning, social distancing and mask-wearing protocols. As we move forward, we will be requesting proof of vaccination, or regular testing, for those who want to work in the office to ensure that our workplace is as safe as it can possibly be. Are these temporary or permanent changes? The biggest and most transformational change for us will be our move to The Bailey. At a time when many other agency groups are downsizing their offices, we’ve invested in creating a destination workplace. The opportunity to move into this new space has come at the perfect time, giving us the chance to design every aspect of our new office space. The nine-to-five model has long been outdated, and flexible working is crucial to make sure that we attract and retain the best talent.Rachel Forde, chief executive, UM U.K. The whole building has been designed to be future-proof, creating new ways of working that will encourage both our staff and clients alike to want to spend time there. Every decision has been made with a hybrid and flexible working model in mind, as well as consideration for mental and physical wellbeing for our staff—something that has been of utmost importance in the past 18 months. How has it changed your view on working hours, and what will you do to implement that? We have worked around a core hours schedule for a couple of years, but the challenges of 2020 pushed us to introduce even more flexibility to allow for the challenges of the pandemic. Strict working hours don’t necessarily mean you’ll get the best or most creative work from your teams, and this was a truth that we embraced. We continue to focus meetings around core hours, and our soon-to-be-announced hybrid working policy will continue to build on this. Do you believe in flexible working and if so, how do you define it? I’ve always been a big believer in flexible working, and I work four days a week, saving ‘Mummy Day Mondays’ to spend time looking after my girls and a day at the school gate, and as they get older just being there for them; at present, it gives me some semblance of balance. The nine-to-five model has long been outdated, and flexible working is crucial to make sure that we attract and retain the best talent. The challenge for flexible working is how to accommodate multiple different preferences—no person is the same and therefore every flexible working request is different. It’s vital for us to support how people prefer to work and to provide the technology to make sure that no one feels excluded even if they are working remotely. Our role as leaders of UM is to ensure that everyone is enabled to work in the ways in which they work best while making sure that both physical and virtual spaces are available for collaboration. What has been the biggest challenge about remote working? Our challenge initially, as creative media practitioners, was how to make the same magic and collaboration happen over Microsoft Teams as we had in the office. We were all kind of familiar with remote meeting options but having to adopt this overnight and keep the momentum going overtime was probably our biggest challenge. Having said this, I’m so proud that we continued to deliver brilliant work for our clients, achieving a talent retention risk score of 8.05 (compared to a U.K. media agency norm of 7.54) last year and winning some incredible pieces of business without a single face-to-face meeting happening. How Embracing Work Flexibility Has Proven 'Absolutely Awesome' for London Agency Elvis What benefits has the agency experienced from remote working? We’ve always been proud of how adaptable and agile we are as an agency and we built on this as we made the switch to remote working. The pandemic pushed us all to become more empathetic and, as we got a glimpse into each other’s homes and family lives over video chats, we got closer as teams and as an agency, as our people proved that they could do their jobs from their kitchen table as well as they could in a traditional office setting. We’ve always been proud of how agile we are as an agency and remote working reinforced this, we’ll be taking some of those learnings and efficiencies forward with us as we transition into a season of hybrid working. What have you missed most, if anything, about working from the office? I’m sure everyone misses those water-cooler moments and the sociable aspect of being in an office. We know that nobody is in a rush to spend five days a week commuting again, but we do know that many of our employees miss that sense of community that being in a physical space together can bring. Flexibility is crucial, but so are factors such as culture, mental health, on-the-job training and learning by osmosis, for which a shared space can make all the difference. We can’t underestimate the psychological power of physically working together as a collective and the benefits of feeling connected. If you could change one thing only about how the industry works—whether about the office, working patterns or anything—what would it be and why? One aspect of the industry that we really need to get ahead of is climate change. As we’ve seen with the challenges of Covid as we all paused our traveling plans and the increasing incidence of natural disasters and problems caused by global warming around the world, we can’t afford to not find a solution. The media industry will be one of the key levers if we’re going to successfully transition to a zero-carbon future. It’s important to talk about the future of how we work, but we need to put the future of our planet high on our priority list. How do you plan to do this? We are proud supporters of Ad Net Zero and are backing the IPA’s Climate Charter. We are having conversations with our clients around how they can reduce the carbon footprint of their advertising through carbon-neutral plans, aided by brilliant IPG Mediabrands initiatives like [eco-friendly OOH signage program] 'Rapport Beyond.' We have also kept sustainability front of mind when it comes to The Bailey. We knew from the outset that sustainability would play a critical role in the development of the building, and this green thread has run all the way from conceptual stages through to the design, engineering and interior of the building. With our commitment to reach real net-zero by 2030, The Bailey will showcase our commitment in the area and we hope that it will inspire our people, our clients and our partners to follow in our footsteps. Mark Read on WPP's Net Zero Commitment and Advertising's Role During the Pandemic