Is five days a week in the studio the future?

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy began his memo praising his colleagues’ “hard work and ingenuity.” But he wanted to make a couple of changes. One was to reorganise the company’s management structure. The other was to announce that from January 2, all employees were expected to return to the office five days a week. It would, he explained, set them up better to “deliver for their customers,” Amazon’s all-consuming obsession.

For the past 15 months, Amazon had asked employees to come into the office three days a week. But rather than highlight the benefits of a hybrid model, this policy had finally convinced Jassy and his fellow leaders that in-house was the way forward.

“We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another,” he wrote.

Amazon is the latest big business to roll back the shift to more flexible working patterns which became the norm during and after the COVID pandemic. Firms like Barclays, Laing O’Rourke, Boots and Dell have all asked staff to come back into the office full-time.

That trend may be set to continue. A KPMG survey of UK chief executives found that 83% believed their organisation would return to pre-COVID working practices. Last year, that figure was 64%.

It’s possible to find compelling evidence that remote workers outperform their in-office counterparts. But depending on how you phrase your Google search, it’s also possible to find equally compelling evidence that remote workers routinely underperform.

Either way, most studies focus on productivity, rather than creativity.

And for creative work, some leaders are convinced that the best work only happens in person. “The nature of creative work – anything that requires interrogation and critical thinking, debate and experimentation – is done better in the company of others,” says Ariel Childs, ECD of Winkreative.

Childs oversees the London studio, where 35 people work five days a week from the Marylebone office (housed with its sister company, Monocle).

While video calls helped Winkreative navigate the pandemic, Childs thinks staring at a screen all day creates a “monotone” environment that is “very limiting for our brains.”

There is no substitute, she insists, for the energy and focus that comes from being in the same physical space.

“It’s the frisson we have with our colleagues, jumping up out of your seat, scribbling something down and turning people’s attention to the same thing,” she explains.

“You’re sometimes on a bit of a cliff edge when you’re trying to crack something creative, and you need that momentum, and that flow, which I think you only get when you’re in a room together.”

Childs admits that while many potential hires are enthused by the in-house approach, others ask about a possible hybrid or remote set-up. She understands why, but it’s not a rule Winkreative is prepared to bend.

As Childs explains, it’s not just about what employees want. She has to consider what clients want too. “Clients are still buying into an output that is modelled on that in-person process,” she says. “They are not buying an output modelled on people sitting at desks in their homes. We have to remember that.”

Dave Greasley also references clients when explaining his approach. He runs Sheffield-based studio 3800, where the team comes in five days a week.

For him, keeping clients happy means doing the best work possible. “That means having different brains together to ideate and explore, having different tools and materials to hand so we can test out an idea,” he says. “We have a maker space so we can jump straight in there and try something, rather than sitting in our spare room and wondering if it might work.”

For Greasley, the question about where to work flows down into three questions – what do clients want? What do employees want? And what does he want as a business owner?

“I’m trying to create something that I want to be a part of,” he says. Which for him means embracing the “energy” of in-person collaboration and the direct connections it builds with his team.

“I love getting our heads together and coming up with ideas. I don’t like writing my thoughts up into a long email and sharing it with a remote team. I hate the idea of a situation where I can’t really understand if my leadership style is landing.”

Some commentators have suggested that hybrid work is the messiest solution, whereas fully in-house or remote teams, which might seem extreme, create the most clarity. Greasley agrees. “I think it’s important to draw that clear line in the sand, because it allows us to move forward, and not keep coming back to that conversation,” he says.

Both Winkreative and 3800’s approach comes top-down from the beliefs of their leaders. But for Bath-based Supple Studio, the shift back to working in the same place happened quite organically.

During COVID, founder Jamie Ellul was concerned their work was suffering. Things moved more slowly, and with fewer check-ins, there were fewer opportunities to course-correct if work veered off course. “That can lead to a wasted day, because it isn’t what the client was looking for, or what I meant,” he says.

Then towards the end of 2020, they were invited to pitch on a branding project for Squirrels, a new branch of the Scouts. “I felt if we wanted to win this pitch, then we needed to be in the same room,” Ellul says, and so he asked the team to take Covid tests and come into the studio.

“We smashed out so much work in a day and we realised that was the best work we’d done in that time, by a country mile,” he says. “Everything was faster, and more fluid, and the lines of communication were better.”

That experience stayed with Ellul and his team. When restrictions lifted, they started coming in two days a week, then three, and then as a team they agreed to go back to five. “I never felt like I was pressuring anyone,” Ellul says. “Everyone recognised the work was better and that working from home can be quite isolating.”

Like Childs and Greasley, Ellul has found that many job applicants are excited by the promise of an in-studio culture. This applies both to junior staff, who crave in-person learning and mentoring, but also senior designers who miss the old ways of working.

And Ellul can’t envisage a time where they would go back to a hybrid or remote set-up. “I hire people that I like because I want to hang out with them,” he explains. “Part of the design process is social – it’s camaraderie, sharing, and also some healthy competition. Those things drive you to do better work.”

Childs too can’t see any way Winkreative’s policy would change. “I see the results, and I’m a firm believer in it,” she says.

For Greasley, the only thing that might change his mind is if new technology could, “recreate the things that happen when we’re all in the same space together.”

What might that look like? He laughs. “I guess there would be holograms involved?”