People Power In Person, Pretty Please. I’m Ready to RTO.

• April 4, 2022
• no comments

By Jessica Savage, CEO

—

After more than two years of remote meetings, brainstorms and new-business pitches, I’m ordering up a full serving of people in person, please – a few days a week.

Like many others, we’re excited and optimistic about our new world of flexible work. This means dressing up, caffeinating with others and coming together to ideate, learn, mentor and collaborate. But it also means knowing we can totally call a soft-pants, work-from-home-day when we need to be heads-down writing a plan or pitch, reading and critically thinking, or reflecting to refine our POVs. I, for one, won’t take for granted the energy I get from being in a room of smart people thinking up fun things – or the new recognition that, sometimes, I’m better for having a different window view, not an office one.

As we begin this transition, we’re focused on the three Cs that make in-person work so valuable: culture, collaboration, and connection. It’s about how you show up for your team, your clients, the agency. It’s about the work and the results. It’s about being there in person when your team, the work and the client needs you. It’s about recognizing that sometimes that’s best done in person, while other times it’s not.

We’re also focused on those who will be coming to our offices for the first time. Having hired a number of new talented team members over the pandemic, from interns to account directors, we’re going to show them just what we’re known for: an inclusive, fun, supportive culture where great people come together to do great work.

Will this flexile return-to-office model be perfect from day one? Not likely. But nor was the transition to remote work. The collaboration between our offices in Montreal, Calgary and Toronto is essential, as is collaboration with team members around the globe. A proud part of the Publicis Groupe, we tell our team members to “Work Your World,” a program that allows them to work from any number of countries for up to six weeks a year. Right now, we have a team member in Costa Rica and many more signing up to travel and work simultaneously. This means integrated video conferencing (and the occasional echo) will still happen, but it will be better than it was. After all, we’ve perfected the phrases “You’re on mute” and “Can you see my screen now?”

That said, it’s not lost on me that the last two years have been heavy for many, myself included. As we begin to unpack all of that and return to the office, we’ll do it together with a kind and compassionate approach that helps everyone feel good about the future of how we work. We’ll learn together. Refine, adapt and keep trying.

For the days when it’s not perfect, we’ll focus on what is: the company we keep, the spontaneous hallway connects, our Happy Hour beverage cart, a cupboard full of snacks, lunch-and-learns, and a handful of after-work spots where we toast our team and new ways of working.