From Beyoncé to brands – why we’re all talking about work now

After the first year of lockdowns, many people were desperate for social interaction, and for some, as Energy BBDO’s Yellow Pencil-winning film for Extra – For When It's Time – demonstrates, that meant even a return to office life was joyous. However, the office Underdogs were back in a sequel to Smuggler’s film for Apple. This time depicting the downtrodden crew of office workers dreaming of going it alone and setting up their own company, not unlike many who, having got a taste of a new and freer way of working during the pandemic, took that leap of faith. These two winning works represent two sides of a changing relationship we have with work post-pandemic.

For the 2022 D&AD Annual, Jonathan Openshaw – a journalist and consultant who writes about innovation, tech and culture, and a former columnist for Mr Porter, where he wrote a longstanding series about work culture – zooms out to take a look at these shifts, and what work culture looks like for the creative industry now.

When Kim Kardashian commanded “get your f**king ass up and work” during an interview with Variety magazine back in March, the internet broke. Not only did people take issue with being told they were lazy by a billionaire (born a millionaire), but the sentiment felt more in keeping with the avaricious Thatcherite 1980s than post-pandemic 2022.

A few months later, another celebrity juggernaut made an unlikely entrance in the workplace chat. “You won’t break my soul,” intoned Beyoncé, in her much-anticipated return to the charts, before encouraging fans to “release your job.” Always an impeccable purveyor of zeitgeist, it’s no accident that Queen Bey chose to stick it to The Man with her new single: the message found far more fertile ground than Kardashian’s swashbuckling free-marketeering.

Alongside its countless personal tragedies, the Covid-19 pandemic pressed the fast-forward button on social trends that had been bubbling away for years. Many of these relate to the way we work, which at its core hasn’t changed dramatically since the factories and counting-houses of the 19th century. Production lines may have given way to cubicle workstations before morphing into open plan ‘creative’ spaces, but the basic principles were fixed: offices were hierarchical spaces where presenteeism ruled.

A shift in power was already underway pre-pandemic, but it was the resulting lockdowns that finally swept away old structures and made way for a new world order – one that seems to favour the employee. “It's become a very candidate-driven market with more opportunities out there than ever before, meaning talent can demand flexibility, excellent working conditions and a positive culture,” explains Jo Gilmour, director of Talent Atelier, which specialises in executive search for the creative industries. “Flexible working hours and office days have become industry standard post-pandemic. Businesses simply won't be able to attract the best talent if they don't have a flexible approach.” The stats back this up: according to recent research by management consultancy Gartner, 75% of workers agree that their expectations for working flexibly have increased, while if an organisation were to go back to a fully on-site arrangement, it would risk losing up to 39% of its workforce. 

Employers are beginning to understand that flexible work doesn’t automatically translate into a hungover workforce of layabouts (unless your recruitment process has gone awry) and that empowering your team to work on their own terms can pay dividends. “It has created the space for more people – parents, neurodiverse, faith, multi-ethnic and more – to have a better balance without compromising the quality of work,” explains Ali Hanan, CEO of inclusion consultancy Creative Equals. “For some, particularly the neurodiverse community, it has felt safer to work in this way, with the ability to do 'deep work' in an environment of their choice.” By breaking the stranglehold of the nine-to-five, it’s becoming possible to bring previously marginalised people into the workforce.

Innovative employers are pushing things even further, bringing back previously abandoned models such as the four day working week, the largest ever trial of which is currently underway in the UK, involving 3,300 workers across 70 companies in a so-called 100:80:100 model (100% of pay for 80% of hours at 100% of productivity). These seismic shifts are not a death knell for the office – far from it. “The creative industries are unique, as the work created often relies on chemistry and collaboration,” says Gilmour. “It’s more a case of the physical office becoming a place for people to congregate and spend time with their team, using that time to really harness togetherness. Then the online days are more about executing the work.”

So, what does this new physical office look like? One man who knows better than most is Charlie Green, co-founder and CEO of TOG, leaders in flexible workspace for twenty years, who recently secured their ascendant position in the UK through a merger with Fora. “Offices used to be vessels to house people while they worked,” says Green, “whereas now they need to be so much more considered and compelling – not just to encourage workers back to a centralised office but to better represent the employer's outlook on the world.”

According to research from McKinsey & Bain, two-thirds of workers say that the pandemic has caused them to reassess their purpose in life, meaning that they’re looking for employers who share these values. “The onus is now on the employer to demonstrate that they’re fully behind this new world view, which takes in everything from flexibility to trust to wellbeing to sustainability,” says Green. “It’s no longer possible to treat these things as ‘nice to have’ or to pay lip service to them: they need to be evident in the physical environment.” On the wellbeing side, this ranges from meditation rooms to trained mental health first aiders, while TOG is breaking new ground for sustainability with the forthcoming opening of Black & White building in Shoreditch – set to be the tallest mass-timber office building ever built in central London.

The pandemic is far from over, and it’s yet to be seen what long-term changes take root. But now that the genie of employee emancipation is out of the bottle, it seems unlikely that we’ll roll back to the inflexibility of old. It’s become irrefutable that a hybrid approach can boost productivity as well as employee wellbeing (when properly executed), and the next generation of workers seem committed to channelling their best-Beyoncé when negotiating contracts.