Dentsu allows employees to work from anywhere for 2020

As restrictions begin to ease across the country, Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) has told its employees they are free to work from anywhere for the remainder of the year – whether that’s at home or in the office.

When designing its return to work plans, DAN used an Employee Wellbeing Pulse survey to gauge how employees are thinking and feeling in the current environment. 93 per cent of employees said that they were comfortable to maintain the current work from home arrangement.

In a statement to staff, the company outlined its return to work plan, aptly named ‘Be the best you’, which includes a phased opening of offices across Australia from July, subject to any further changes in easing of government restrictions, and the ability for people to choose where they want to work from until the end of 2020.

DAN’s technology consultancy business, Davanti, has developed a purpose-built app to help manage the phased office openings across the country. The app allows people to book or register in advance when they want to work from the office, which will help the company control building capacities in real-time and respect social distancing measures. To support ongoing organisational listening, the app also contains a wellbeing feature to capture quick pulse checks on how employees are thinking and feeling at any given time. This data will be used to help inform DAN’s flexible working arrangements and decisions throughout the year.

Angela Tangas, Dentsu Aegis Network Australia’s CEO, commented:

“Since the outbreak of COVID-19, our decisions have always been to put the wellbeing and safety of our people first. We took a leadership position and acted quickly, and were able to mobilise 100% of our staff to work from home in only three days. Ensuring smooth continuity of client delivery, and supporting how our own clients adapt to working from home was also critical and the results have been excellent.

“In returning to work, all businesses will face a fresh round of decisions and, for employees, a fresh range of emotions. Rather than things simply going back to normal, we saw an opportunity to embrace the positives that isolation has provided us. It was important to me that all our people had a voice in designing what our future work environment looks like based on what matters most to them and their individual situation.

“Organisational listening is critical to having happy and contributing people, so rather than a traditional engagement survey we ran a short Employee Wellbeing Pulse which showed that 93 per cent of our people are comfortable working from home for an extended period of time. We’ve proven that working from home is possible and effective. Our teams have embraced the next normal in how they support our clients and partners in a digital ecosystem, from leading virtual pitches and innovation workshops to running engaging events and festivals.

“In many ways, working remotely has increased collaboration within our business and created an open teaming environment, enabling us to seamlessly bring the best of our capabilities together to solve client opportunities or challenges from anywhere. So, when considering our return to work plans, we thought ‘why change a good thing?’

“We’ve therefore opened it up to our people to decide how they work for the remainder of the year. We’ll begin to open our doors in a phased approach in line with government restrictions for those people who are craving the office environment or have client arrangements, but the big shift we’re introducing is the choice to work from anywhere until the end of 2020.

“Of course if our clients need us in the office we will be, but at the same time I think all businesses will be having similar thoughts and discussions about whether physical face-to-face meetings are needed.

“Our Davanti team have developed an app for us to manage this process. People will be able to book or register in advance for a day they want to come into the office, which will mean we can centrally manage our maximum capacity thresholds at each of our office locations in real-time. We are also looking to make this available to our clients to help with their own plans.

“Continuing to monitor employee wellbeing will be crucial to this being successful, so a key feature of our app will be to gauge how people are feeling about our working arrangements throughout the remainder of the year. These insights will inform and power our decisions, as we know happiness in your role equals discretionary effort and we believe that effort can be produced from anywhere,” said Tangas.

-ends-

For more information, please contact:
Lucy Povlsen
Head of Strategic Communications
+61 411 251 933
lucy.povlsen@dentsuaegis.com

About Dentsu

As part of Dentsu Inc., Dentsu Aegis Network is innovating the way brands are built for clients through best-in-class expertise and capabilities in media, digital and creative communication services. Dentsu Aegis Network ANZ is made up of 20 agency brands including Isobar, BWMD, BC&F, MKTG, Dentsu X, iProspect, Vizeum, Davanti, Amicus Digital, Accordant, Data2Decisions, Posterscope, Cox Inall Change, Cox Inall Ridgeway, Cox Inall Communications, Haystac, gryo, Scorch, The Story Lab and SMG Studios. Globally, Dentsu operates in 145 countries worldwide with over 40,000 dedicated specialists.  www.dentsuaegisnetwork.com.au / www.dentsuaegisnetwork.co.nz