Will the advertising industry survive the WFH debate? 4 industry leaders reveal their candid thoughts on WFH
To investigate whether ‘productivity’ is more important than creativity, if learning by osmosis will be a vestige of the past, and if being in an office really does produce better outcomes for clients, Seja Al Zaidi spoke with Gruen panelist Camey O’Keefe, Havas Media Australia CMO Francis Coady, Head Thinker at Thinkerbell Suzi Williamson, and freelance strategist at Have a Plan, Ben Lucas.
This week, Apple mandated that employees’ time is up for indefinite working from home. Employees have now been ordered to head into the office for at least three days a week.
A sizeable portion of people will argue that working from home makes them more productive and eliminates unnecessary time wastage in their workday – but when it comes to the advertising industry, which is founded on creativity, communication, ideas and osmosis, what really is the future of the workplace?
To investigate the impacts WFH has on client outcomes, the future of creatives and whether marketers can really produce their best work while socially atomised, I spoke to four industry leaders with strong opinions on the matter.
Bang ON!
This article is for the time…. and right at the right time!
Such a deeply insightful, incredibly well researched and hugely clever article that addresses one of, if not the most important of topics the creative industry are facing and discussing right now across all leadership levels (actually all industries really).
Seriously well recruited respected industry stand out leaders providing respected real wisdom and insights.
One of, if not the one BEST piece of journalism from Mumbrella this year.
I work for a remote-only agency and we’ve had a number of get togethers for social interaction and purpose building and it’s been great doing that while enjoying the flex of WFH. It might be different for digital agencies but I don’t agree that we have to come back to the office to get creative. We still need to collaborate but this is nothing new and trust is fundamental to this. Sure there’s challenges with being on mute or wifi issues but you can be just as easily derailed by chats, get caught up and miss meetings, lose people’s voices by loading rooms with big personalities in the room or lose time with picking up the kids from school. My team and I are transforming our business, processes and have great client interaction WFH 100% and it isn’t stifling our success. It’s how we work and I don’t really feel the need to be in the same room to do that. WFH isn’t perfect but neither was WFO. I personally have been drinking significantly less since moving away from the office and I’m feeling much healthier as a result – anyone else feel this way? Are we so eager to put all our eggs back in the office basket and forget the productivity, comfort and agency many of us achieved throughout the pandemic? I don’t like seeing WFH is productive, BUT everywhere. I’m sensing a strong, forceful sentiment the more I read on the topic that senior leaders want nothing more to return to boots of the ground, claiming you can’t do it from home as effectively. But we all got on fine work-wise the last two years didn’t we? Many businesses grew, onboarded many new team members and invested significantly in online onboarding that we now want to discard? It says to me we don’t trust our people, and never did, we just had to these past two years, but now we’re going back to the office because we’ve always done it this way. This is very worrying. The Dutch just voted WFH is a human right and they are some of the most progressive and productive people. Let’s not jump back into the old and work towards a true hybrid piece that isn’t just temporary (like 2 days WFH now but we’ll be back 100% WFO need year). Yes, I appreciate offices and culture are expensive and take a lot of effort or maintain but the purpose of culture is retention. If voices for WFH aren’t heard, I guarantee people will vote with their feet. There are score of WFH/remote-friendly places people can join where they are trusted, respected and not forced to obey dinosaur dogma.