WPP staff made to work from the office four days a week
Staff at FTSE 100 ad giant WPP will be made to come into the office four days a week under a new policy announced to staff just weeks before it is set to lose its crown as the world’s largest advertising firm to Publicis.
Boss Mark Read confirmed the policy change at the London-listed media behemoth, which owns the likes of Ogilvy, Burson and GroupM, in an email to staff on Tuesday.
Under the new global rules, staff across the group’s dozens of markets are to attend the office at least four days a week from April onwards, including a move to mandate all staff to attend the office for at least two Fridays a month.
Employees will then be able to choose which of the other four days they would like to work from home.
In a company-wide memo seen by CityAM, Read told staff: “Spending more time together is important to all of us, and we are making a change to help that happen.
“From the beginning of April this year, the expectation across WPP will be that most of us spend an average of four days a week in the office.”
With the decision, WPP becomes the first of the major advertising holding companies to recall its staff to the office for four days a week.
Publicis and Omnicom – the other two firms to make up the top three advertising giants – are both understood both to operate three-day week policies.
WPP’s growth stalls
It comes as the London-listed firm battles with consecutive years of stodgy performance, culminating in WPP likely to lose its position as the world’s largest media holding company to French rival Publicis at the end of the first quarter.
Earnings at the media giant have stalled in the wake of an advertising spending splurge during the pandemic, which boosted performance.
Clients are taking an increasing share of their creative work in-house and have begun to devote ever larger amounts of their media spending to tech giants like Google and Amazon.
According to GroupM, last year saw Big Tech firms hoover up over half of all advertising spend for the first time ever, as the hyper-accurate targeting and large reach they can offer appeals to a growing number of advertisers.
In his email to staff, Read cited his firm’s employee engagement surveys as proving satisfaction among staff correlated with office attendance and that clients were increasingly expecting their agency staff not to work from home.
“The data from across WPP agencies shows that higher levels of office attendance are associated with stronger employee engagement, improved client survey scores and better financial performance,” he wrote.
“More of our clients are moving in this direction and expecting it of the teams who work with them.”