Serviceplan Group's Global CCO on the Continued Need for Creative Spaces

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 IPG Agency UM UK Views the Office Now and Improving Sustainability How has the pandemic changed how you view workplaces? Obviously, the pandemic has pushed us all into a completely new situation—and with that comes a completely new definition of a “workplace.” In 2022 we will move with our headquarters in Munich, along with more than 1,500 employees, to a new building that is actually still under construction. In this building, we will provide for approximately only half of our employees to have a permanent workplace. I think this says it all: we believe that the best work will happen and that our employees will be most productive if everyone has the ability to also decide on the surrounding that is most conducive to creating work. Technology provides the connection; the agency provides the space to meet and work in teams if needed. With that comes a certain amount of trust between employer and employee, and the pandemic proved that people can be just as productive when working from home as they can be in an office environment. How have you changed the office environment since the pandemic started? Of course, we always followed the rules and regulations of the government throughout the whole period. From very early on we started to offer Covid tests and vaccinations regularly for all employees. Are these temporary or permanent changes? We will keep all the necessary Covid regulations in place for as long as possible to guarantee a safe environment for those who want or need to come to the agency. Do you believe in flexible working and if so, how do you define it? It hasn’t changed my view on working hours but just on the place where we work. As I mentioned before, if there is no need for a colleague to do his or her work in an office building every day, but if they can do the work as well or even better somewhere else, I would be misguided to force someone into a building just because we call it an agency. The result is important—not where or how it is created. Flexible working doesn’t mean to work less, it means to use the time one spends working more efficiently. What has been the biggest challenge about remote working? We all experienced what we are missing most when working in a mobile office: the culture. And the culture is the hardest thing to keep up when you can’t meet your colleagues anymore in real life, but only online. So, the future for agencies will be that we have to provide buildings and surroundings that represent the culture of what we believe in. In these spaces, colleagues can meet, spend time or have the option to come to work every day in the agency if they want to. Just like it makes sense to come up with the best result. On the other hand, I absolutely do not believe in totally virtual agency concepts. We can’t build a community in the long run if the only thing we provide is work. Creativity needs a special surrounding in which to grow. Sometimes it needs the air to fly - but sometimes it also needs walls to be protected. What benefits has the agency experienced from remote working? The most obvious benefit for an agency of course is the fact that we save rental costs for big agency buildings. But as we all celebrate remote working as the “new normal,” we sometimes seem to forget that an employee also has the right of a “working place.” Not everyone can work from home. So, in the future we will have to look even closer at the situation of every single colleague in order to offer the best solution. Another benefit of remote working is the fact that we can build teams across the whole country, or even across borders more easily, and must not only concentrate on the capacities we have in place at one location. What have you missed most, if anything, about working from the office? I am not the type of creative who works alone, I need someone around to bounce off and have a dialogue with. I need feedback to build on. I need other people in the room to spark my imagination. Besides the fact that I need to talk a lot of nonsense all day long, just to get it out of my head to create free space to come up with ideas. 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? We should not take everything so seriously. There are a lot of agencies out there. And there are a lot of clients out there. Wait for the right fit. And don’t force something too hard. Not every win makes an agency happy in the end, nor will a client always be happy just because he or she picked a famous agency name. Creativity needs certain chemistry to grow. How do you plan to do this? Stay honest to yourself, your agency and your clients. No matter if you work in an agency building, at home, remote or from the moon—creativity is not something that you can buy in a warehouse. It still and always will be created by human beings, not by robots. Launching Its Agency During the Pandemic Shaped Mischief’s Office Plans and Priorities