Elephant in the (Virtual) Room: The Clash over Remote Work in Agencies

During the first year of the pandemic, I worked from the office daily while our teams went remote. I counted the days in isolation with tally marks on a whiteboard, like a prisoner in solitary confinement at Alcatraz (um, with access to office supplies, I suppose).

Like most people, I wondered what would become of the world as supply chains broke down, we adjusted to a poorly defined "new normal," and wondered how on Earth things might ever truly be normal again. My only office companion was my (since-departed but always faithful) yellow lab Lucky, who was all too happy to spend days snoring audibly on a couch.?

Don't mistake this as a complaint. I CHOSE to be there. Five thousand square feet of office space and the sound system, all to myself. In that isolation, I found structure, silence, and separation from the countless distractions of home. As an extrovert, my mental health suffered from a lack of social interaction, but I found my productivity and the quality of my work increased dramatically.

All agencies were confronted with turning their "culture-driven" teams into a confederation of functional yet distributed individuals. Debates ensued about how to keep culture from dying. Fortunately, I can report that, for our firm, this question was answered resoundingly when we saw that an agency's culture does not live in a happy hour or in an office but in the shared values and mutual respect exemplified by its people.

The viability of a hybrid agency workforce was reinforced during the robust economic recovery of 2021 when agencies expanded rapidly and competed fiercely for talent. The banishment to remote or hybrid work of 2020 became a defacto expectation of employees (or a right or implied benefit) of the new agency workplace in the following year. Those seeking agency employment were in high demand and had the leverage to dictate what was important to them. Turns out that working from home was important to them. Agencies reluctantly relented and became all too willing to let people work remotely to keep revenue flowing.

These days, with sunnier skies due to herd immunity and successful vaccines (thanks, science!), and millions of dollars locked into leases and other physical infrastructure, big agencies are now working to turn the tide. Voices calling for a return to the office are growing louder, emboldened by a soft economy that has shifted the leverage back to agency management.

As evidence of this, Publicis Groupe now requires all employees to be in the office at least three days a week – always on Mondays, with no consecutive remote working days allowed. During a time when big agencies are shedding jobs and people, this feels a bit opportunistic. This overreach may be reversed in 12-24 months when the economy improves and resembles what it looked like in 2021.

So, what's the actual argument for returning to the office? These mandates seem built on two false notions: (1) remote work prevents spontaneous creativity, and (2) productivity will be diminished.

1. Does remote work hinder spontaneous creativity? I'll start with the obvious: if creativity happens spontaneously (and it does), then, by definition, it happens anywhere and at any time. If you've ever had a big idea or solved a problem while on a run or taking a shower, then you might agree with me here. Turning that creativity into action might require collaboration and coordination, but that must come later. One can even make a case that reduced stress improves creativity. Since working from home saves Americans an average daily commute of 72 minutes a day, according to a 2023 University of Chicago study, it is?logical that a remote or hybrid workforce is in a more relaxed state as a result.
2. Does remote or hybrid work reduce productivity? According to the Pew Research Center, roughly a third of Americans who can do their job remotely now only work from home, up from only 7 percent before Covid. However, the economy remains strong regarding unemployment and GDP and has only been strained by inflation. If working from home drove down productivity, we would expect a closer correlation between the rise in work-from-home and economic results.

If these arguments for a return to the office are weak at best, what's the real reason big agencies are calling for in-person teams? Call me a cynic, but I think it has more to do with exerting tighter control over a distributed management structure than these stated positions. As a byproduct of this, however, agencies are confronted with the associated overhead costs of physical space to accommodate the entire workforce, potentially being in one place at one time. Unfortunately, that cost must be covered by someone, and that someone is the client.

We may have the debate wrong altogether. The future of agencies should move away from framing the issue as management versus employees. An underperformer will underperform at home or in the office, and a high achiever will perform at a high level from anywhere. The key is to measure performance based on the quality and quantity of the output rather than where it was completed.

Perhaps the truth is that not everyone is wired the same way. Some thrive in isolation with the freedom to set their schedule and still be highly productive, while others must be managed and directed closely to achieve success. Like DiSC assessments and other psychographic methods of assessing the motivations and limitations of an individual, a human resources exercise might serve as a Hogwarts sorting hat to determine whether an employee (and the agency) might benefit most by having that person work remotely or in close quarters with a team.

Call me crazy, but perhaps the strongest agencies in the future will genuinely embrace tailoring management to mesh with the personalities, preferences, and passions of everyone on the team.?

After all, an agency is only as good as its people.