What are you doing to get people back to your offices?
As the work from home debate continues, Adam Ferrier, chief thinker at Thinkerbell, discusses how agencies can encourage employees to return to the office, and demonstrate their purpose.
So, a year ago I wrote an article saying that everyone should do their best to get back to the office, for their own benefit, not their employer.
It was the most commented on story, and most read opinion piece on Mumbrella in 2022, and fair to say not everyone agreed with me.
How are things going a year on? How’s it being back in the office?
Truth be told, I couldn’t get an Uber this morning – ‘currently not servicing your area’ in the inner city at peak hour! – and 13cabs wasn’t up to it either. I decided to grab 30 minutes back and write this article from the couch at home and will go into the office at around 10am.
Flexible working hours are now instantly a thing and have their benefits – and yes, there are some people who literally could not work without them.
However, my original point still stands.
In our creatively driven industry, it’s vital that people get into the office to interact and deal directly with humans as messy as themselves, as that’s where the magic often happens.
So, now is the time to ask your employer… what have they done to encourage you to come in? What’s changed, what investments are they making to ensure the agency is an amazing place to spend time, and what is the agency’s (dare I say it) purpose?
To this end, we turn our attention to the all-agency away day. There’s a relatively new trend of creating videos out of these experiences, which gives people who are interested the opportunity to peek into other agency cultures and see what’s happening.
Most of the away days I’ve seen fit into one of three categories.
Option A: Everyone goes somewhere really nice and has to sit through presentation after presentation from the company heads. There’s little interaction, as it’s an opportunity for management to tell non-management where the business is heading. And little point being somewhere nice as you never get to see it.
Option B: The ski fields, or Gold Coast is booked for a few days of all-in partying.
Option C: A bit of both crammed into the one event.
It’s with an element of pride and blatant self-promotion that I share another way of doing things. This is something Thinkerbell organised with a sister agency called s p a c e.
The away day was called Fyre or Fire, depending on who you ask. It consisted of a few days away where the people in the agency created, curated, and delivered all the content.
This resulted in everyone in the agency choosing between 54 sessions of amazing ideas and inspiration for people to enjoy.
The content was amazing, from a silent bush disco to understanding the role of marketing in a post-consumption world, to understanding the role of marketing sciences and making babies, or just dissecting the pure joy of eating an orange.
People were free to choose their own journey from among the entire program – all created by the people at Thinkerbell.
This conference then morphed into some experiential theatre that again featured us, the people of Thinkerbell in the action. In an absurd, boundary pushing, mind-expanding way.
If you want to have a look, this video tells a part of the story.
Thinkerbell does things a little differently: a) we’ve forged our own path, merging a lot of siloed disciplines together that hadn’t been merged before; b) we’ve created a new operating model centered around Thinkers and Tinkers; and, c) through our brand promise of ‘measured magic’ we’re trying to do things that others wouldn’t dare.
All of this means the agency is like a self-learning ball of creativity, forging its own path.
All we have is the people who join, and the ideas they bring, and to this end the away day was a wonderful example of harnessing the collective creativity of all of us.
As we head into a world where people are demanding more from their work environments, it’s an exciting place to innovate in, and see what we can offer. It’s exciting to be living our purpose and providing an environment that’s as creative as the output we demand.
At its worst, it’s a company engagement exercise. At its best, company away days offer participants an opportunity to do something they’d never be able to do in any other facet of their lives – a marker of an agency’s purpose and place in the world.
As the market for amazing talent remains competitive, it will be incumbent for all companies to offer their people amazing experiences beyond the day to day.
Now’s the time to ask if the company you chose to work for is living their brand promise, and if you’re helping to create it.
Adam Ferrier is chief thinker at Thinkerbell.
I wonder if Away days will become the next office ping pong table, or Kombucha on tap?
Sure, these kinds of exercises are great for engagement and motivation, but asking staff, all of whom have different family/lifestyle/household situations, to come away for 3-4 days can be a big task for some people. Add in people who are extremely introverted, neurodivergent or differently abled and your retreat for the sake of company culture, suddenly becomes an exhausting experience.
I’m not saying Adam’s approach is necessarily wrong by any means, it’s his business and he can run it as he sees fit. I just don’t think it’s a silver bullet solution to attracting talent who are thriving in a WFH/Hybrid capacity (for whatever their reason) back to the office.
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I would prefer to rest and recharge rather than being obligated to participate in uninteresting woke corporate weekends while my family is at home feeling bored.
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Maybe consider that Adam and thinkerbell have had a very successful 12-18 months. WFH has many advantages, but in an industry with young starters, and a shrinking segment of advanced skills, having more days in the office is crucial to develop young talent and also deliver strong client results. I am not sure why the debate, COVID is over. We all understand that flexible work supports our people, and no one disagrees. But work is work, building relationships, ensuring best in class results for our clients, and building skills in our younger team members is why we all have jobs in this fabulous industry. Personally I think more time in the office does deliver stronger results.
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Groan. Another self-promotion in the name of office culture. Another business leader humble-lamenting their excessive real estate expenditure in the name of brand promise. Sure there are benefits to working at home, and there are benefits to working in the office. It’s the boomer mentality that can’t get it’s head around this new mix.
With office use in the Melb CBD at about 40% of pre-pandemic levels. And headline after headline about the rental and housing crisis. Maybe it’s time to get macro on a possible solution to both issues.
Fyre. Brilliant branding there.
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‘Truth be told, I couldn’t get an Uber this morning – ‘currently not servicing your area’ in the inner city at peak hour! – and 13cabs wasn’t up to it either.’
Laughing out loud. And you lost me from this point onward. You do realise most people take crowded, expensive trains, sometimes for up to 2 hours each way?!
I’m sure employees would be more likely to come in if agencies were providing complimentary Ubers or pay rises that can indeed pay for these. I dare say the latter is what people really care about. More so than HR led PR stunts.
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Broke my ankle running to the comments
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We love this Adam…!
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Everyone else gets it wrong but we get it right! So tedious. We don’t need to watch your video.
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“I couldn’t get an Uber this morning” and “13cabs wasn’t up to it either”.
Seriously?
Perhaps try catching public transport and interacting with some of those consumers you’re always professing to psychoanalyse.
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Largely agree, other than I’d say Adam is Gen-X. Even so, boomer bashing does seem quite childish. The WFH – WFO balance has grown exponentially only since 2020, and most employing agencies (likely skewed to Gen X leadership) have done very well to adjust, manage work flow, and profitability, generally without ‘look at us’ out-of-office employer branding fluff. Yes, this post is 33% opinion and 66% self-promotion / marketing, but do we expect anything else from Adam? It very much aligns to his personal brand. 😛
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Adam, what are you doing to become more agile in where and how you work? What are you doing to adapt to the expectations of new generations of colleagues? Because the generations coming up are not interested in hierarchy, structure or giving their souls over to their job.
Every one of these “get back to the office” pieces from Gen X (mostly) male bosses just reinforces that this supposedly creative and thought-leading industry, doesn’t get it. It’s a hangover from gender-normative ideals of “men going off to work” and we don’t live in that world anymore and most of us do not feel validated by being on a bus for an hour to go sit at a computer for 8 hours.
If going to an office suits you, do it. If that’s where you need to be for “magic” to happen, great. I’ll be making “magic” on my back deck in the sun, chatting and collaborating with colleagues who understand how to optimise the technology at our fingertips to make that happen.
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‘Truth be told, I couldn’t get an Uber this morning – ‘currently not servicing your area’ in the inner city at peak hour! – and 13cabs wasn’t up to it either.’
lololololololololololololololololololololol
So you’re taking an uber to work while 99% of your office suffer through public transport and long commutes.
NEXT
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Getting up at 6am in cold rainy windy dark morning, spend almost 10 dollars, to stand in an crowded train next to some snoty sick people for an hour. Then do the same thing again in the dark cold windy evening. If you have kids to pick up, dog to walk, dinner to cook, too bad. Use some sleep time to do it or ignore them. Then do this 5 times a week. Apparently this is good for you.
Why? [Moderated under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]
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Depends on the industry.
Depends on the sector.
Depends on the business.
Depends on the client.
Depends on the role.
Depends on the individual.
Depends on the task.
Depends on the day of the week.
Depends on productivity.
Depends on profit.
There is no ‘answer’.
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An away day, to entice me back into an office….nope. Been on way too many of those uninspiring ‘days of creativity & togetherness’. I’ve done my fair share of time, full time and freelance, in all agencies, including one of yours Adam, and I just don’t get the need for ‘bosses’ to want to have us ‘on leash’. If people don’t perform when/during ‘out of office’ then fuck them off, sack them. But if they do their job, or excel due to the leash being stretched then let them do their job outside of the office. Housing everyone under one roof is antiquated and goes to show you, and others, are pissed because you’re now paying for an office space you realise you don’t really need.
Bring back VCCD. They had an idea long before covid made it a reality.
Your idea of having a team who love each other, love being together as a team, and who love being together as a larger team is a hoax. People want a job. People want a job that pays accordingly. People want ‘bosses’ who understand reality. People working together on their own teams are a true team.
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Surely most employees HAVE returned to the office by now – just not for 5 days per week, which for some reason there still appears to be an ongoing push for…
Times have changed. We lived through a global pandemic and have reassessed what’s most important in our lives. Flexibility is here to stay – and that’s a good thing for everyone.
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I tried really hard not to, but I cringed through the whole article, the video particularly so..
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Talk about jumping on the bandwagon! (Isn’t that what ad agency people do mind?)
If work is being completed at an exceptional standard by people who are at home, why do they need to come into the orifice?
It appears to me that there are heaps of Gen X’s (bosses / managers) who don’t enjoy their homelife and want to party at work? Then their are the majority who don’t mind partying at work, however also enjoy earning a crust from home, avoid that awful commute and expenses that come with heading into town.
Can you imagine the puzzled faces when the owner of a drone parcel delivery service announces that the drone operators have to accompany the drone to every delivery…..? Madness.
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I tried not to cringe writing it – Adam
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I’m not sure why and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I feel sorry for you
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This is a bit opportunistic and vulgar. At least Sean Cummins had an intelligent view.
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Good article – but it does highlight the case that culture is generally pushed from the top down and is a handful of peoples ideas of what they want it to be.
In some cases it’s attendance and compliance, in others it’s complying with what someone deems as cool or interesting. The greater challenge is both sides not really listening to the people they employ.
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The macro issue with the CBD is most train lines are running replacement buses, there is no on street parking and all day parking is at least triple what it was pre-pandemic.
Is it any surprise that foot traffic is still down during the week? It’s absolutely packed on Friday/Saturday nights.
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Jeez – harsh comments from ‘Lame’ and ‘me’.
I agree it’s a bit of agency promotion (as Adam writes himself); and he makes the gag about ‘Fyre’ himself too… but, in fairness, the clip does show something different to most agency offsites – and showcases some creative, entertaining people living the agency brand promise.
Yes, it’s a bit wanky, and it’s not hard news – but if I were a potential client, or (particularly) a potential new recruit, I’d buy into this as an example of company culture/ ethos.
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TBF it looks like a great event
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People just don’t seem to get irony these days
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I love the idea of agencies trying to do what they can to get good people rather than just say get back to work. I also like people commenting on, and trying to deal with this issue. I also love the look of that event – it makes ours look like a corporate PowerPoint session – and I think that’s the point of his article.
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I’d take more comfort in knowing my boss doesn’t have to take a train!
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