If you want to see a bustling ad agency office—or what qualifies for that these days—visit on a Wednesday.

What was formerly known as Hump Day seems to be the one agreed-upon day required for employees to come into the office following more than two years of remote work, according to 20 agencies surveyed by Ad Age about their back-to-office policies. But getting employees back into the building—for two days a week, three days, or the once-standard five—is still hard, and “we are struggling with how to enforce it,” said one senior agency executive.

While conceding that COVID brought about a critical conversation about work-life balance, many senior executives privately admit frustration that the balance has swung too far. Reluctant to mandate a full-time in-office schedule for fear of losing employees, they are hoping that the hybrid schedule the industry has adopted will naturally evolve into more days in the office as employees see the benefit of collaboration. 

As one agency CEO put it: “You can’t build a career on Zoom.”

No consensus

There’s no hard consensus on what is the “right” path—even among founders. Jeff Goodby, co-founder of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, said he works a hybrid schedule while his partner Rich Silverstein is unfailingly in the office every day.

“We did an employee survey not long ago. A quarter of our employees never want to come back to the office,” said Goodby. “Fifty percent say they want to come in one, two or three days. The other 25% want to come in all the time.”

“As a manager, you have to straddle that,” he said. “If you make strict rules of four or five days in the office, you narrow down the workforce you can hire.”

The agency now requires staffers to be in on Wednesday and another day of their choice, Tuesday or Thursday.

“We have encouraged people to begin spending more time in the office without mandating anything yet,” said David DeMuth, CEO of Stagwell Global's Doner. DeMuth says he has seen a steady improvement in attendance and on a typical day he will see about 40-60 employees come into its Michigan office, out of around 300 employees. He said there will likely be “some tweaks” in the coming weeks that will be a “baby step towards spending a bit more time in the office.” Anything more “radical” will likely come in January, he added.

Ad Age found only one agency that is said to have mandated a five-day-a-week schedule: Omnicom’s Zimmerman Advertising, which did not return requests for confirmation or comment.

Wednesday is the new Monday

Many shops require employees to be in the office a few days a week but do not have set days. TRG, formerly known as The Richards Group, requires three or more days in the office per week, which are up to the employee’s choosing. WPP’s Ogilvy requires in-office work two to three days a week. Terri & Sandy asks employees to be in two to three days a week and the independent shop is trying to encourage people to come in on Wednesdays with free lunches. Of 60 employees, more than half were in the office last Wednesday, said Co-Founder Terri Meyer. Mother’s New York and Los Angeles offices ask employees to be in the office three days a week, Monday to Wednesday.

Indie OKRP has designated Wednesdays as one of two days a week the Chicago-based agency asks people to be in the office.

“We’ve been feeling more and more just a natural gravitation toward people coming in more and more often,” said Tom O’Keefe, OKRP's founder and CEO, particularly now that the agency is energized by a big new client in Burger King. Industry attempts toward mandating attendance, he said, “squeezed too hard” and now, “things are happening more naturally, and people are coming back at their own pace.”

Asked whether clients are concerned about remote work, O’Keefe said, “Clients at the end of the day are going to make sure they are getting the work and if they are I don’t think they care whether you are doing it remotely, in the office, hybrid or whatever, because they are going through the same thing.”

“I think that over time the work will suffer,” said DeMuth. “That's a fear of mine—that the work won't be as good as it could have been. As it relates to productivity, I think working from home, people are more productive in their lives. I'm not sure if they're more productive in their job.”

He added that “sometimes things that I could walk in the office next to me that might take 30 seconds [to solve] now take 30 minutes in a working from home or remote world.” 

Fig has a flexible model and lets department leaders decide when it’s appropriate to come in for big meetings, but Judith Carr-Rodriguez, CEO and partner, said “we find that purposeful face-to-face collaboration—like we see on production and shoots—is a huge driver of the quality of output.”

Space issues

New York agency Joan’s plan to return fully to the office in September 2021 was derailed by continuing COVID-19 variants. Now the agency is eyeing a two-day-a-week in-office model, but faces a new problem: The agency has grown from 50 employees to 85. “If we called everyone back, we don’t have enough seats,” said Lisa Clunie, co-founder and CEO.

“It’s an interesting time to negotiate for space, because you have to actually save some money and get more,” she said.

Once in its new space, Joan will treat Tuesdays and Thursdays as “collaborative and team-oriented” office time. Now, 20% of its employees come in on an average day, partly due to the lack of space.

Another small independent agency owner told Ad Age their shop negotiated a 25% discount in rent space because fewer employees are coming in—which helped offset burdensome costs incurred in software and technology to enable remote working.

Reasons to come in 

Some industry execs point to remote work as a missed career advantage. For example, one agency exec said his CEO is roaming empty halls every day, presenting a rare opportunity for one-on-one time for employees at any level.

Currently, 72andSunny is hybrid without set days set to come into the office, said Global CEO Evin Shutt. The exception has been 72andSunny Amsterdam, which in May started requiring employees to come in three days a week—in response to employee demand.

“An overwhelming majority” of the shop’s 100 employees wanted to be in the office in some capacity, according to Simon Usifo, 72andSunny Amsterdam's president, who said that employees actually began asking leaders to “put a bit of pressure” on other employees to return.

Usifo recognizes that Amsterdam is somewhat unique because the city is small and many of its employees are a 10- to 20-minute walk away from the office. The Amsterdam outpost is also allowing its employees to work remotely for six weeks during the summer and six weeks during winter. “We prove to them that we trust them in those 12 weeks, so in exchange I think it's not too much of an ask to come into the office three days,” Usifo said.

Office as antique

Not every agency is buying into in-person work. Ryan Kutscher, founder of Circus Maximus, said the agency gave up its New York lease in March 2021, and seven months later he moved to Austin, Texas. The fully remote agency now has 23 staffers, who he said are “probably on average 500 miles apart,” in states including California, Georgia, Virginia and Utah. Kutscher, who said that his agency is based in New York “only for the purposes of Chase Manhattan Bank,” believes that the notion of an in-person office is antiquated.

“Never once have I heard, ‘I just want to commute to an open concept office with Razor scooters and Keurig coffee machines,’” said Kutscher. 

While culture is critical for an agency, Kutscher believes it isn’t found in a brick-and-mortar structure. “Employees want what they have always wanted, to do cool shit,” he said. “They want to do a good job. They want to feel supported, nurtured, and part of something.”

Others argue that creative collaboration can only truly be found working together in an office. Keith Cartwright founded the agency that bears his name remotely during the pandemic but invested in a dedicated office space in bohemian Venice, California, eight months ago for the agency’s 40 people. 

Culture and identity

“The only way to make this real is to create the environment people want to come to,” said Cartwright. “That is on us, that’s on the leadership team to make it appealing and a place that people want to congregate.” Cartwright maintains that a physical office helps create an agency’s identity—what’s on the walls, the furniture selection and the desks all reflect “who you are, what you stand for, your belief systems.”

“Five day a week is going to be an interesting conversation in years to come,” said Cartwright. “Some people will never see the value of three to five days in the office, but if creatives don’t see the value in it, I wonder what value they find in the business? What do you love about it, if it is not mentorship, collaboration and camaraderie?”

And there is another important reason that Cartwright has invested in a physical office space.

“One of the reasons I wanted to put my name on our office was for those people who look like me in this industry to understand it is a possibility,” said Cartwright, who is Black. “They can have a building and their own company. I understand the significance of that and having a space is part of that—having a physical space where people can come and witness it, they can touch it, it is real. That is a major part of what I want to leave behind and I hope for people who work here to show them that it is possible for them, too.”