Less New York, more family is the rationale for Mat Baxter’s move back to Australia last week but there’s a twist: just as the former Australian and global media agency boss, who now runs IPG’s much smaller creative tech, design and innovation firm, Huge, has based himself about as far away from the Brooklyn roots of the business as geography will allow, the pandemic-triggered surge to remote working is not working for business culture and capabilities. Nor is it for humans, argues Baxter – even if they rile at the suggestion.

But before the remote-working accolytes get too defensive and feisty, Baxter has no plans for a return to office life as it was before 2020 – it is now not possible to expect his 1200 people scattered across the globe to pile back daily into a network of offices. But physical interaction needs more backing from both sides – business and its people.

Baxter’s point is that just as business has been forced into a trade-off in legacy work practices, and often a client and culture disconnect, people must also give some ground, including emerging talent who lack context for how culture, connection, capabilities and careers are developed via real-world interactions.

Bring back the physical

“Did the pendulum swing too far too quickly on remote working after Covid? I think the answer is yes,” Baxter told Mi3 in confirming his unannounced return to an Australian base. “Were we one of the companies that did that? The answer is yes and we're actually starting to bring it back a little bit. It’s a trade-off. Every company on the planet right now is experimenting with striking the balance between the flexibility that workers demand with the cultural anchoring that's required in the company to make them part of the culture and make them feel like they're part of something bigger.”

Baxter says “nobody has cracked the formula”, including the big tech companies who are the most progressive in remote working. “Even Google continues to experiment with what it requires - it's gone back to a mandatory number of days in the office,” he says. “The last time I heard it was now three days in the office and that's been fairly tightly policed by Google -  they're checking swipe cards to ensure that those people are making those three days in the office happen. But it's still a grand experiment.”

Baxter is slowly inching his way back from a fully-remote mantra – Huge has re-opened its London office and has established an “experience centre” in New York where Huge teams are required to fly in from across the world for early client onboarding and project “kick-offs”, for instance.

“We don't profess to have all the answers or the formula,” says Baxter. “We’re experimenting, just like everybody else. And when we’ve, dare I say, learned from our mistakes, when we learned that culture is maybe not as strong as we'd want in a certain pocket of the business or in the business as a whole, we make adjustments and course corrections. And we're doing that on an ongoing basis. And to be honest with you, we're going to continue like we’re experimenting. Now, do we maybe ask people to come in who are within striking distance of an office? Do we ask people to come in a certain number of days a week? Yeah.”

So what’s Baxter’s biggest concern with remote working in the way Huge initially deployed? 

Losing the magic

“Just losing the magic that comes by having great brains in a room, bouncing off one another in a really dynamic and creative sort of way,” he says. “I mean, that dynamism, that magic, that alchemy that exists when you do it in the real world - it's very, very difficult to replicate over Zoom. And I’ve felt it myself, right? When I get my team together, my ELT [executive leadership team] physically together in a place and we talk about the business, the depth and quality of conversation, the richness of conversation, the connection in the room, even people's willingness to debate more sensitive topics, those things all surface in real world engagement. They don't surface in the same way on a call, on a video call. And that is my biggest concern - you have to have that magic in the business. And that's what culture is, right. It's to some extent that immeasurable magic that comes from bringing people together, like-minded people together in a positive culture, cracking big problems and having great ideas. And that happens in a real world environment much more effectively than it does over video calls. I don't think anyone would argue that fact. So how do you continue to have that in the business when you have a workforce that demands flexibility, remote working, when you have a talent pool that's distinct from office spaces.”

Young and restless need IRL

Baxter says he’s spent a lot of time on the remote-real life workplace conundrum and one of the “overwhelming” observations is that younger people are not joining the dots – yet. “One of the things that overwhelmingly comes through with younger people is they say they want remote working and flexibility - tick, we give that to them,” says Baxter. “And then interestingly, what happens when you talk to them about how they're feeling about their work experience, they say they feel a lack of engagement and connection with the company. And I and my colleagues actually say ‘okay, cool, well then come into an office’.”

The default to mental health is part of the challenge – many industry bosses, including Baxter, tread carefully here but the subtext is younger talent are not yet joining the dots on some of the reasons they may be feeling the way they are. Baxter agrees.  

“No they’re not and so the job that's got to be done is we've got, to some extent, act as kind of guides for the younger people in the organisation to say, ‘look, we want to give you all this flexibility that you demand but we've also got to connect you with our company and our culture. And that's not just good for the company, it's good for you. You want a mentor, you want someone that you can look up to who can build your career around… I mean, I've had many, right. I've had some fantastic mentors in my career who have shown me how to be great and taught me things. You learn from those people, by seeing them operate in the real world, by sitting in a meeting with them and watching them deal with a really difficult client and watching them smooth over a massive problem with a client, or watch them in a room brainstorming and being creative. When you watch your colleagues in action, that's when you learn. And so I think the story we've got to convince young people of is you benefit from a real world interaction. That's where you get that mentorship. That's where you model your behaviour on the people around you who are great and who you can learn from. And so I think that's the job we've got to get done. And I do think the dots are yet to be fully connected in that regard.”

There endeth Baxter’s remote working lesson – for now. In the next instalment, Baxter unpacks why he’s dumped the traditional agency head hours-based service model for product sets, or templates, that are linked to fixed prices and outcomes, like the consulting sector.