This week, Digiday+ members received exclusive access to marketing editor Kristina Monllos’s look at why the return to offices is more nuanced than it seems for agencies and their employees. Members also had access to the results of a Digiday Research report that shed some light on what a return to the physical office looks like for media workers. Read more below.
As some holding company agencies have started to open their offices, or announced plans to do so soon, employee anxiety about return policies is starting to build.
Employees are being told that going back to offices is on their terms and that doing so is on a volunteer basis with limited capacity. In late July, for example, Omnicom opened offices for employees who wanted to have a place to work and returning was “totally optional,” according to the holding company. This week, in a memo announcing plans to open offices across the U.S. in September, McCann told employees that they shouldn’t feel “pressure to return to the office” and that they can “continue to work from afar” but that the offices would open for those who wanted to access them.
But the inevitable ‘is it really’ question about optional returns is in the wind as Labor Day nears.
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The return to the physical office is a far off idea for most in the industry.
A new Digiday survey found that for 42% of media industry workers, their company hasn’t said anything concrete about when they’re expected to return back to the office. For 28% of employees, they expect to be back in the physical office by the end of the third quarter of this year. About 9% said they have been told they can work from home permanently.
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