I was lucky enough to be invited to talk on a panel by MIQ last week, where they flew in 40 MIQ’ers from around Australia to spend a week together in Sydney in person reconnecting as a team and with client and agency partners. It was a global initiative, with the theme being ‘evolving together’.
The intention of the panel was to bring together diverse voices to share their opinions on returning to the office, the impact working from home has had on their businesses culture and what the future of flexibility might look like. I was asked as a representative of a media agency, alongside senior leaders from agency holding groups, marketing clients and members of the global MIQ team.
The recurring themes I noticed, regardless of the business or agency model, were:
- The great resignation has turned into the great re-engagement – lots of interesting ideas are now being accepted as the norm
- The gift of time back, and how valuable it is – so use it wisely. Investing in oneself is invaluable (emotionally or physically)
- Digital exhaustion is a real and unsustainable threat
- Invest in space and technology to bridge the physical and digital worlds together
- Prioritize rebuilding social capital and culture to get people back into offices
- Hybrid workplaces are always evolving based on business needs. No one size fits all, and every company should continue to be in beta mode
Unfortunately for MIQ at the kick off drinks on Monday night, one of the delegates unknowingly had COVID, which resulted in the ‘week of togetherness’ presented on a virtual screen…
The irony of participating in a panel discussing ’reconnecting’ via screen was not lost on me.