The event agency workplace in a post-pandemic world

As economies prepare to reopen following the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations, corporate businesses across the world are re-evaluating their approach to home versus office working.

Barely a week seems to pass without another major company announcing plans to introduce a new flexible working model.

PWC announced staff will be able to work from home a couple of days a week and start as early or late as they like, building society Nationwide has told its staff they can choose whether to work at home or in the office, oil giant BP has said staff can spend two days a week working from home, Twitter has told staff they can work from home "forever" if they wish, while Salesforce’s new Work From Anywhere policy gives employees three options: flex, fully remote, and office-based. 

When the pandemic first hit last year, millions of people around the world began working from home out necessity. But more than 12 months later, with many still not having set foot in an office since the crisis began, employees have realised there are many benefits to home working. A recent survey by Deloitte found that two-fifths of workers said they were more efficient at home, while a third were more relaxed. Just over 40 per cent said they like not having to commute, as it gave them more time and reduced costs.

The survey also revealed that almost one in four workers hope never to set foot in the office again, though slightly more (28 per cent) are desperate to get back. Just over two-fifths (42 per cent) want a balance, with at least two days at home each week. In order to attract and retain the best talent, businesses will need to consider introducing a more flexible approach, with a hybrid or blended model expected to become the norm.

This will pose challenges for business leaders who need to get used to a long-term change in how to get the best out of their staff and keep company culture alive. With employees in different locations at different times, there is a real risk of a disconnect between departments and teams. This is where events and incentives have the opportunity to take on renewed value, providing companies with the opportunity to create more frequent motivational and social business gatherings, whilst reinforcing the cultural identity of the brand.

Indeed, 87 per cent of the agencies we surveyed said they believe the increased flexible and remote working practices of their clients' teams will lead to a need for delivering more events aimed at maintaining and developing the corporate culture and employee loyalty. In addition to playing a key role in helping their clients adjust to new flexible working practices, agencies are navigating these same challenges with their own teams.

Working for an event agency has rarely been a 9-5 office job, with event managers often working long hours and spending long periods of time away from home on-site. Over the past year, like everyone else, event agencies have had to adapt to remote working, with the majority of staff working from home 100 per cent of the time, except those delivering virtual events from studios. There has also been a huge focus on health and wellbeing, with agency leaders feeling the duty of care to provide a better work-life balance.

As varying lockdown restrictions lift across the world, what will be the optimum balance of remote versus office working for event agency teams? According to our survey results, a third of agencies (32 per cent) said they expect employees to be in the office three days a week, 26 per cent said four days a week, a fifth (20 per cent) said five days a week, with 11 per cent happy for staff to only come in two days a week and 5 per cent one day a week.

We asked six agency leaders around the world to share their thoughts on what their agency workplace will look like post-pandemic…

Angélique Eriksen, CEO/Founder, Egg (Paris, Geneva, Brussels, Dubai and New York)

“I have been pro remote working from the very start, and it’s something we have been doing at Egg for 21 years. Before the pandemic, I already had about 12-15 per cent of our workforce working remotely from other areas in the country, so they weren’t coming into the office at all. That has been our company culture from the start, so the switch to fully remote working over the past year was easy.

I think a lot of good has come out of it. People have rediscovered spending more time with their kids and having a life outside work. We are in a very pressure-oriented industry and clients can be very demanding. So, having that breath of fresh air and working from home is a good thing.

Since the pandemic, one person from my French office has asked if he can move to the Netherlands and someone from our US office is moving to Switzerland. Our chief brand officer who just came into the company and manages the largest team in Egg, has also just moved outside Paris.

It’s about freedom, even for me personally. I’m glad I don’t have to feel like I have to go in the office every day. I lead by example and show that it’s possible. We’ve certainly shown over the past year that it’s possible as we have delivered some of the most complex projects we have ever managed at Egg without ever seeing each other.”

Jemma Peers, Managing Director, Top Banana (UK)

“We’ve worked really hard during the different lockdowns to maintain engagement, stay connected and keep our culture alive. Throughout the last year feedback has shown our teams still feel really connected to each other and therefore, as restrictions lift, we aren’t surprised that they are asking for a more flexible approach to where and when they work.

The leadership team at Top Banana have discussed this at length and whilst we are open to finding a new balance of remote and office-based working, we’re also really keen to get our teams together again when safe to do so. Although it’s been proven that we are able to successfully collaborate digitally, you can’t beat face to face communication, especially in the industry we work in.

We’ve recruited a number of new team members during the pandemic, so it’s really important for them to get to meet everyone and experience our ways of working and culture. Before the pandemic we limited our recruitment to talent within commutable distance to one of our three offices in the UK, however now we know that remote working really can work, we’ve cast the net further and it’s really paid off. Our new client services director is based in Devon and will work remotely for the majority of the time, staying connected to her team digitally, however she will travel regularly to the office, meetings, or events if and when needed.

We also expect a number of our clients to adapt to a more flexible working model, which will of course impact the way that we work with them. This will become integral to our project planning to ensure we meet those all-important deadlines that are so crucial to the type of work we do.”

Colja Dams, CEO, Vok Dams Agency (Europe, Middle East, Asia & Americas)

“I don’t have my own office anymore. I got rid of it five years ago because I am always travelling and just work wherever I am. Our entire team has been working from home over the past year, and we expect to have a flexible working model moving forward.

We will still maintain offices, but we are downsizing our office space because it doesn’t make sense to have a desk or a chair for everyone who may come into the office. For example, in our Hamburg office, we have around 25 people normally, but there was has only been an average of four to five people in the office at most times, so it makes no sense to keep an office this size. We see it with all our clients as well. They are considering cutting 60 per cent or more of their office space because they don’t need it.

But I believe you do need a home, especially for the younger team members who want the chance to go to the office and meet people face to face. If you ask the younger staff what they are missing the most right now, it’s the socialising and after-work drinks with their colleagues. This is something we need to look into internally and create more opportunities for people to get together to keep that informal interaction and social element alive.”

Ian Cummings, Global VP, Commercial, CWT M&E (Americas, APAC & EMEA)

“As part of the wider CWT Group, we operate in close conjunction with our business travel colleagues in many of our offices around the world. For example, in Stockholm, we have a fantastic office for both the business travel and meetings and events teams. It’s very open plan with lots of different meeting spaces available and you can just book what you need. It’s a bit of an internal WeWork solution in many ways and I think we will see more of that model going forward.

We will continue to review what footprint we need – both space and facility wise – but we certainly won’t be needing anything like what we needed in the past because people have become used to working from home.

I personally am a firm believer in teams collaborating and working together face to face, particularly on creative solutions. When we get a brief in, bringing together different experts from the tech, creative and client teams and putting all those people in a room together for three or four hours to brainstorm is one of the most efficient ways of getting a really exciting solution. I think that is much harder electronically.

So however we evolve from this as CWT, I will be trying to ensure that our M&E teams have the opportunity to meet the office. It may be that different teams pick a day and on that day all come into the office to go through workloads, projects and pipeline. I don’t think we are absolutely clear on what our future workplace looks like yet and I expect it will evolve, but from an M&E side, the value of face to face for our teams is really important.”

Dominik Leonhardt, Head of MICExperts (Switzerland)

“Before the pandemic, our team members were coming into the office five to seven days a week, so home working was pretty new for us. Obviously if someone had a specific need or reason to work from home for a short period of time, then that was possible, but it was not normal.

As we come out of the pandemic, flexibility is something we are very open to. The idea for our agency moving forward is that there will be two days working at home and three days in the office. We will not have 100 per cent home working because we need our teams to collaborate regularly, which is not as easy to do over video.

We have reduced our office space by 25 per cent already so don’t have space for everyone to come in at the same time. For that reason, we will oversee the planning of which days people come in. It will not be up to the employees to choose which days they want to be in the office and which days they will work from home. It will be different teams coming in on different days so we can make sure we have enough space for everyone. Again, there is a possibility for more flexibility in certain circumstances, but that would be discussed on an individual basis and will not be the norm.”

Steve Quah, CEO, Cheerful Twentyfirst, (UK & US)

“We are conscious that everyone’s work/life balance has changed for good, and we want to respect that. We ran an internal survey with our staff and the lion’s share of them all want to come back to the office. Our focus will be a flexible approach, but with some boundaries. As a collaborative, creative agency, you need that office dynamic, especially in the lead-up to bigger, multi-disciplinary projects.  

There is a separate piece around mentoring, day-to-day learning and leading by example that some of our junior team members are missing out on working from home. Those ‘water cooler moments’ that, as planners, we love to recreate. We have also grown our team quite significantly in the last year, and onboarding can be a challenge without the closeness of office culture. 

With regard to how we are going to set up our offices in the future, it’s a different brief now. We have outgrown our space, so we are looking for a new office that has different parameters around collaboration. We may not need desks for all staff to be working in the office at one time, but we certainly want enough space to have inclusive, collaborative sessions that can accommodate everyone, and spaces to celebrate or socialise as well.”