What you need to know:

• One of the big bugbears many agency leaders remain frustrated by in this evolving world of work is the fact they can’t return staff to a default in-office position.
• According to a fresh survey of 23 agency leaders by Chris Savage, all are eager to see working in the office become the default position, but few believe simply forcing people back into a physical workplace is the right way to make it happen.
• It's a tricky tightrope to walk – and those that get it wrong risk losing staff. But some firms think they have nailed it.
• Akcelo, This is Flow and Pedestrian Group have all managed to bring in guardrails that see employees back in their offices at least three days per week, thanks to a combination of complementary flexible work policies and an emphasis on two-way staff engagement.
• All three claim productivity and performance gains that see them delivering the same quality and output of work – even in cases like This is Flow, where they’ve also adopted a nine-day working fortnight.
• Consistency, cultural distinctiveness, investments into better office spaces and a recognition of the importance of flexibility are all critical elements working in concert with the return to the office for these organisations.

Akcelo: Co-creation culture calls for in-office 4 days per week

Akcelo calls it the 2-1-2 model: A policy where staff spend the first two days of the week in the office, have the choice of working Wednesday from home, then return to the office for Thursday and Friday. According to CEO, Aden Hepburn, 95 per cent of staff are showing up on those four in-office days. More than half even come in on Wednesday.

“We haven’t had to mandate anything. That's the best part – it’s our personal guide rails for the business,” he tells Mi3. “No one is checking you at the door.”

Hepburn attributes some success to a lack of legacy – tech or process. Akcelo was built during the height of the Covid pandemic. The agency now has 200 people across Sydney, Melbourne and Vancouver, straddling a broad set of demographics Hepburn roughly splits into thirds.

“A fast-moving, highly collaborative model that thrives in co-creation” was the foundation for the agency, and it’s for those reasons Akcelo wanted people in an office space together more often than not.

“I think we were very fortunate in a way… we got to create our processes. We went straight on the Google suite, and we didn't have any legacy around us. We had to figure out how to work as a company anyway,” Hepburn says. “We always wanted to be nimble, very flexible, be on the latest cloud technology. That naturally kind of worked in our world.”

Akcelo debuted its 2-1-2 model when its newly designed Sydney HQ office opened in May 2022. Briefings in the office on Mondays have become the norm. Then along comes Wednesday, which Hepburn says staff use as a ‘get shit done’ day, when they can work from anywhere. It’s proven out – staff overwhelmingly schedule personal appointments or non-work tasks on a Wednesday rather than impede on an in-office day.

“Wednesday is the day we try and use for very few distractions – put on the headphones, get that report done or finish that strategy doc. And you can do a few errands at home if you need to. That’s something that's important to us,” Hepburn says.

“It’s more up-tempo towards the end of the week; people have drinks at the bar, and we have a lot of in-person meetings. We've got meet our clients on those days as well.”  

Hepburn claims he’s not seen any hesitancy about people joining Akcelo due to its emphasis on in-person office time. Given the agency’s rapid growth and client list including Forty Winks, Netflix, TikTok, Lego, PepsiCo and Tinder, proof points for its culture are there.

“If there are some people who will say, I won’t do four days in the office. We’ll say that’s totally cool, we aren’t mandating or forcing it. But these are our guardrails and we think that’s the best combination for the people that work at Akcelo plus our clients, and what our collaboration model needs,” Hepburn says.

Even so, Hepburn admits professionals who’ve chosen to move into regional areas might not be the best fit for Akcelo, even as he insists he’d “never reject people being for or against the 2-1-2- model”.

“We might not be the best place for those people to work. Our co-creation model, the needs of our clients, the workshops are so core to the Akcelo DNA – and particularly given the speed we move at.”

Committing to getting people back into in-office work did come with investment costs: The fit-out bill on a connected, collaborative 1000sqm office space in a 1913 toy manufacturing warehouse. Hepburn labels the space “Ace Hotel reception meets Qantas lounge”. Scattered throughout are lounges, booths, ‘touch-down points’ and a large breakout island bar dedicated to encouraging staff and clients to collaborate, share and create. Akcelo has won awards, including a silver award in the Sydney Design Awards in 2022, for its HQ.

“I think we were probably worried people maybe wouldn't ever come back. In those early days, I won't lie, it was, definitely a scary time thinking how would we work in the future,” Hepburn says. “Would people ever want to go back to the office?

“You can't just create a model and expect it to do all the heavy lifting for you. What we did is we design our offices, starting with our Sydney HQ, to be so incredible, people wanted to be there. They self-elected it was a better environment to work in than the kitchen bench at home.”

Having a four-day, in-office rules is sweetened by other flexible work policies. “While some people might argue that four days in the office is a lot, we would counter that there's unlimited flexibility wrapped around that,” Hepburn says.

For instance, staff get an early mark on Fridays every fortnight, and there’s a ‘work from anywhere within a three-hour timeframe’ policy for up to four weeks per year, one week at a time. Then there’s ‘flexible shoulders’ for new parents: If they need to drop off or pick up kids, they can start earlier or finish later.

By no means is it the model perfect, Hepburn says. But he believes it’s paying off commercially, although he’s not tracking pure productivity gains to prove it.

“The measurement for us is the happiness of the agency, retention of the staff, energy in the business every day when people are in the office, and the volume of people who come in,” he says.  “We're very fortunate: on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, we get 95 per cent of people in the office, almost guaranteed. On the Wednesday, we typically get 50 to 60 per cent of the office coming in on that day.

“What excites me about the flexibility inside our model is everyone can find the parts they can use to complement their personal lifestyle.”

Hepburn also believes Akcelo was ahead of the curve in finding a future work model it wanted to pursue, then sticking to it. The key message here is consistency and follow through.

This is Flow: 9-day fortnight, 3 days in-office work per week = 2% attrition rate

Independent agency, This is Flow, started with three days in the office as a compulsory model. It’s since introduced a nine-day working fortnight. With a staff attrition rate of just 2 per cent, it’s clearly got a formula that’s palatable.

“The biggest problem I was hearing and saw across other places was you didn't have half the people in some days. You didn't really have collaboration in the office, yet our whole industry is built around people and collaboration,” CEO, Jimmy Hyett, says. “From early on, we've set the three days in the office, and it worked incredibly well. Mondays and Fridays are optional work from home, so people can come into the office.

“We have seen so much success off the back of that. We plan a lot of meetings, team events, company presentations on Tuesday to Thursday. We know everyone's in here, everyone's engaged…. they're happier staff, and what we’ve seen is strong productivity through the week.”

In complement, the agency initially launched Flow Profit Share once it hit 12 employees, setting company goals then profit sharing with staff. “It gave everyone that worked at Flow a commercial mindset, as well as reward for doing things that helped us to grow,” Hyett says. But having hit 40-45 people – essentially diluting that profit share just by weight of numbers sharing it – a new incentive model was needed.

Enter the nine-day working fortnight in April 2023, the brainchild of two separate teams at This is Flow’s team culture conference. Three weeks and some client consultation later, a model was born: 90 per cent of the time for 100 per cent of the pay and 100 per cent of the output.

“It’s a first-mover advantage in the industry, which was great, because no other media agency has moved in this direction,” Hyett says. “It's a bit of a trust model. We are giving the team that extra day off every fortnight and still expect the job to be done. It was give and take, saying yes we're going to take that extra day off but still get our tasks done, and the job done for clients.”

Teams days off are split by client so there’s always half a team available every Friday. Hyett says This is Flow can do this because it hires hybrid talent.

“We call it T shaped talent: Everyone in the team has a deep specialty, whether they're digital, TV buyers, planners, whatever it is. The line across the top, is they know a little bit about a lot, so they're across everything,” he says. “It means the client can still pick up the phone no matter what it is and someone is going to have an answer, which is super powerful.”

That kind of skills breadth is something other agency bosses and marketing chiefs are seeking to instil within their teams for similar reasons, both locally and internationally.

Per Hyett, the result of Flow's model is in fact a productivity increase. He measures it firstly by performance, as the agency is able to measure time to deliver. Hyett says there has also been positive feedback from clients on output and accessibility.

“We haven't seen anything drop off at all, and we're seeing happier stuff. It's interesting what people have started to do,” Hyett says. “Previously, you may have had people saying I’ve got to leave early as my fridge is being delivered on a Wednesday. Now, people are planning a lot of life admin on their Friday off. Through the week, they're here more.

“We’ve shifted somewhat from hour-base remuneration to value-based remuneration and based on outcomes. That’s come in as we’ve started to transition how we're working. We’re able to get more done in a faster timeframe, but still deliver to clients in a more positive way and to a very high standard.”

Recruitment is a lot easier too, and Hyett claims a waitlist of staff. Plus This is Flow simply doesn’t lose talent. While the Media Federation of Australia cites an industry attrition rate of 26 per cent, This is Flows is just 2 per cent.

“Over nine years, we've only ever had five people leave. We don't lose staff to competitors. We don't lose staff, really,” Hyett says. “If we invest in our staff, and our staff are happier, more productive and have more energy, that's going to mean we have the capacity, energy and passion to deliver for our clients.”

In addition, This is Flow has increased training spend. To ensure teams work as efficiently as possible, it has optimised meeting times and calendars. For example, an hour meeting is now set to 45 minutes, to give people time to check emails and be more productive through the week when they're onsite.

“If ever we do have something on a Friday, we'll give a day in lieu to be used in the next month. It's a give-and-take relationship, which is really powerful. No one takes the piss, it's strong and literally we have the happiest staff,” Hyett says. “There are a lot of case points around that, but we were named the Best Place to Work in Australia, in Australia's best workplaces, which is a huge thing for us.”

Hyett claims people are still delivering the same output, they're just working smarter. A new generation of AI  has streamlined processes, such as connected online media plans accessible from anywhere.

“It's not all work either. There's so much value in the time when you can speak to people, and just have free thinking time and creative thinking time. We still have so much of that,” he says, adding staff aren’t working back to get things done.   

Like Akcelo, Hyett knows the importance of his three days in-office, nine-day working model has in building the right culture and distinctiveness. He says he complements this through hiring policies, with an emphasis on passion for media first, capability or background second – because skills can be learned.

“At a holding group, your culture and values have to extend to so many different people in so many markets. You can't just force feed a culture,” Hyett comments. “Everyone says it's impossible to grow and keep culture. But I don't think that's impossible.”

There's a host of other initiatives in place at This is Flow besides flexibility, all aimed at ensuring a “work hard, play hard, relax well” culture manifests.

“We only have two goals in this agency. One is the attracting and retaining staff. The other is attracting retaining clients. If we don't do one of them, we can't do the other. On the flip side, so much of what we can do is deliver great work and great service to our clients. You just can't have one without the other. And there are a lot of agencies that do one and not the other,” he says.  

Hyett admits it's hard and it costs money to invest into such initiatives.

“It takes some balls too, to go in your own direction and innovate how you should be working with teams. Just feel confident to do it the right way. But that’s just what you have to do,” he adds.

Pedestrian Group: Driving performance with four-day and three-day sales and editorial in-office attendance

Pedestrian Group has been another organisation to return staff back to the office faster and sees it as a competitive advantage. But as CEO, Matt Rowley points out, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach and the group recognises different roles have different needs. As a base layer, Pedestrian moved its commercial team to four days a week, while editorial are three days a week in the office.

“We acknowledged many of our editorial team require quiet work. But that's the base,” Rowley says. “What we then find is there are many people in both teams who are in five days per week because they made that choice.

“We've also talked about teams being in the same days. These days, it's not such a problem. But we don't want people to communicate remotely with team members when they don't need to.”

Pedestrian made an extra push on these guardrails a few months ago, firming them up. According to Rowley, there was little pushback.

“A mix of people realise it’s important. The other thing is we do have a good culture, it is a good place to be. That wasn't a barrier. People like the vibe of being around others as well,” he says.  

“Our look to move people more in the office than not was about valuing that time we have together. It isn't because we didn’t trust, or have the ability for people to be productive from home. We can all just see it's better on several dimensions when you have more face time. It’s also not like we're saying five days a week is mandatory. We're got that flexibility if something's happening in someone's life, people are more used to working around that now.”

For Rowley, in-office time was most critical for the learning and career progression of younger cohorts. But rather than uphold the myth these younger cohorts simply don’t want to engage in face-to-face interaction, Rowley firmly believes Gen Z’s ambition for professional growth is seeing them increasingly recognise the importance of in-office collaboration and learning.

“Gen Z are fiercely ambitious, both personally and professionally. It’s different for everyone, but as many realise their professional goals are being limited by remote working, they’ll make their own choice on the balance between the two and gravitate back to the office,” Rowley says. 

“First, you develop faster when you’re around people to learn from. Second, in a multifunctional creative business like ours, you get better outcomes, so you perform better. Third, the right people see it because you’re physically in front of them. The upshot of all of these on average is you progress faster and get paid more the more you’re in the office.”

Four years on from lockdowns, Rowley also believes the theory you can learn everything behind a screen have also been firmly busted.

“What you’re already starting to see is those people succeeding and learning faster, responding faster, progressing faster, versus those people who aren’t, are in the office. It’s just human economics driving that,” he adds.