Toni Handler is Deputy CHRO, International and Chief People Officer, Americas at dentsu.
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When our company thinks about the future of work, we aren’t simply thinking, “What will work look like down the line?” Rather, we’re defining an active approach to creating the kind of culture that employees want to take part in. Culture is a talent differentiator for us—an end-to-end strategy that involves being modern and agile, as well as supporting an environment and workplace where people want to give their best.
One of the mainstays of our approach is flexibility. After the pandemic, many companies implemented mandates regarding their employees’ working arrangements—some saying employees must come back to the office full time, others insisting on a few days a week. We quickly realized two things: One, research shows that these mandates backfire significantly, as far as yielding lower productivity and employee attrition, and two, that implementing such a system would undermine the flexibility and employee-focused culture we’re committed to creating. Bluntly, a mandate would not work for us.
This led to our own process of reflection, as well as discussions with employees themselves. We held focus groups; employees completed engagement surveys. Through these discussions and internalizing employee feedback, we worked to create a motivating environment that would yield the high level of productivity and client relationships that have defined our brand. Rather than trying to dictate our employees’ work styles, we decided we wanted to be intentional about bringing people back to the office when it made sense, but not when it didn’t. We redesigned our work systems, culture and physical spaces to promote connection, and through this, collaboration and innovation.
For us, the future of work is about creating experiences and programs that build on that sense of connection (without any mandates needed). How do we do this? For us, there were five main components:
1. Our leadership is completely on board.
We knew early on that we needed our leadership to buy into our system: to both provide the spaces we need, and reinforce policies around the kinds of times and situations when employees needed to be in the office, and when they didn’t. Our leadership needed to communicate our policies effectively and make sure we had access to the kinds of physical workspaces (private phone booths for calls, lounge-like settings, etc.) that we felt would stimulate creativity and connection. In support of this, we created a playbook with the goal of helping our leaders master the elements of effective leadership in a hybrid, distributed world. Our leadership playbook prioritizes clear and frequent communication, promoting engagement and connection, supporting work-life balance and, importantly, leading with trust.
2. We clearly communicated our policies.
Ambiguity is never beneficial to anyone—leadership or employees. As much as our employees were clear with us that they wanted flexibility, they also needed guidance and clarity on what was expected of them. We established an agile working policy to provide employees with that clarity and guidance. They needed to know what hybrid work in our company entailed, what types of meetings or events would necessitate being in the office together and how to continue productively and effectively serving clients in a largely virtual context.
3. Every location became a small community.
Because we wanted it to be productive and inspiring when people did come to work in person, we've established integrated location teams for all of our flagship offices. These are office teams of very senior, highly visible employees who are very well-known in the company. Their role is to “champion” that office, with the help of HR and the office services team, and to ensure that we provide events (both professional or learning-oriented, and social) for people in the surrounding area. We allocated a small budget to provide things like meals and coffee, as well as food and drinks for happy hours and evening events. We found this really helpful in driving up local engagement, even with many people working remotely.
4. We created live events that people wanted to attend.
From client pitch sessions, to live trainings, to interesting speakers, we knew there were events our employees would be interested in—so we started holding them consistently at our flagship locations. (That food and beverage budget was put to good use.) A few weeks ago, for example, we had 600 people in for a training on artificial intelligence. We've also done new hire trainings, onboarding, and “back in person” sessions in our flagship offices. For new team members, we feel this is a differentiator—it means that, even if their work is mostly remote, these new hires will now know whom to ask or where to go when they need help. These sessions are important for helping new folks build relationships and community. They’re also important for our more tenured employees, as far as stoking these workplace relationships and upskilling and reskilling to keep up with technological changes.
5. We focused on continuous communications and storytelling.
Last, but certainly not least, we focused on competitive positioning externally, with communications and marketing, to amplify what we were doing to adapt our work culture. We're constantly talking about it and doing conferences about it. And I can't tell you how many people have reached out to me, saying that they’ve heard about what we're doing to build connection. The result has been increased office utilization and people choosing to convene in person: Last year, we were at around 15% office utilization globally. Today we’re at 30%.
Ultimately, we’ve been successful because we did something that shouldn’t be revolutionary, but (in an era of office mandates) kind of is: We listened to our employees. We think it makes sense to do some sort of annual or bi-annual survey—to listen to employee perspectives about what’s working and what’s not. What promotes employee engagement? What promotes employee satisfaction? Employees can tell you! And, company leaders must remember to actually act on this feedback, clearly indicating that they’ve heard what has been shared, which is so important for obtaining discretionary effort. When people feel they’re truly being heard, and that their feedback is taken seriously and valued, that’s when that sense of connection is fostered, leading to transformational products and services.
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