Do we need to be more creative about how we work as well as where we work?
Starcom’s Liz Nottingham and chair of the IPA’s People Management Group on ‘work is an activity, not a destination’…
If you were setting up a business today, with your home as collateral, would you choose to open up in some of the most expensive real estate in the world? Well agency offices in the West End may not be the norm in the future as technology is allowing us more and more to work in many different places and spaces.
The cost of such prized space is one issue. The desires of Generation Y are another. These 15 to 30 years olds are to be found in 45% of Adland. They want flexibility with their time, they get working hard; they may be idealist, but they are not work shy, but do not see why all of this work has to be done in the agency office. Furthermore, Generation Z, the digital natives are not too far behind them.
So we have some time to get this one sorted!
Having recently conducted research workshops for the ‘Future of Work’ project for the IPA, there was some debate with Generation Y around a number of relatively easy and positive measures agencies could take to change the way they work now for the benefit of their people and their business going forwards.
When pushed to think about how agencies could organise themselves differently, a number of examples and ideas for different approaches emerged, most of them enabled by advances in technology.
We need to be more creative about how we work as well as where we work. One participant described a virtual company where his wife worked as a PA. Unlike many PAs she saw her boss once a quarter and by using Google apps she still managed to run his work and busy schedules effectively. They meet in London once a quarter, in rented serviced offices. Neither of them has the formal structure of an office but they still run a very large business entity. Both of them felt they were even more productive as they had concentrated periods of time away from the distractions of others.
It would appear that we are flexible and creative in our thinking when hit with a crisis. When the ash cloud grounded us all, a legal firm had to cancel a conference of 400 people. A two-day event suddenly became a one-and-a-half hour video conference. This creative problem solving saved them £1.5million. Face to face time is important, but do we really need to do it all the time?
Our Generation Y see the office as a base camp; a way of coming together for ideas and inspiration and social action and then working at their desk at an independent location. The main purpose of the office would then be to provide spaces where people could come together for face-to-face interaction; inspirational meeting with clients and colleagues.
We are all turning into the health service as the culture of a 24/7 service is on the increase. In the same way that the same team of health care staff do not manage your care 24 hours a day, the same should be true of agencies. Despite protestations to the contrary, it was argued during our workshops that no client could really expect 24/7 service from a particular individual.
We need to develop systems and procedures to be able to hand over effectively and safely from one to another. It was argued, that with appropriate use of technology, agencies could adopt a similar approach with clarity and confidence. Activities would be logged in such a way that the next person in the team could pick up the work stream when they came on duty.
Could shift working provide clients with a 24/7 service and so help us free up our talent?
An alternative to shift-working within one geography would be virtual shift-working by pairing up offices in different locations around the world. A recent example is of an Australian national who had been working in London, but had to return to Australia for a prolonged period in order to sort out his visa. This did not stop him working on the client’s business; effectively continuing the service overnight when the UK clocked off. The client was happy as they had 24 hour visibility on their business. As the UK slept, Australia was at work. Is the answer the location of talent as much as the war for talent?
Change is upon us. We need to take the next step and start to make work work for our people and our clients.
The Future of Work is the fourth in a series of IPA reports on workplace issues produced over three decades. It is based on workshops and roundtables with 150 people across the ad industry including clients, agency CEOs, HR directors, new recruits (Gen Y) and middle managers (Gen X). For more information visit www.ipa.co.uk