We spoke with Whitney Milne, Head of Client Services, at Virtue Americas about team connectivity, workplace flexibility, and the importance of fostering agency culture.
Over the past year, work environments have had to change drastically. How has your agency taken employee feedback, coupled with what’s appropriate for the company to create a work plan going forward?
Much like the rest of the ad industry, VIRTUE has been learning and adapting to this new norm in real time. Our initial response to the pandemic was quick - we implemented WFH at the onset of Covid and have been humble and collaborative in terms of what’s next in our ‘go forward to work’ plan.
The pandemic has no doubt changed work expectations and preferences - some individuals are thriving with the WFH flexibility, and some can’t wait to get back to the hustle of being in an office. With the goal of accommodating both, we considered many different options and welcomed individual, team and dept points of view. As of Monday Oct 18th, we eased back into a hybrid model in the U.S. with agency culture and thoughtful meetings leading the charge vs hard and fast rules on attendance.
How has the changing work landscape affected the way pitches and campaign briefs are approached and conceptualized?
VIRTUE has always been a borderless agency, pulling in people, ideas, and resources from around the globe based on briefs and specific needs, so in a way we’ve always been ahead of the curve. We continue to offer our nuanced, localized perspective with the power of a global footprint across briefs and pitches.
Our greatest tool is our people and expertise across strategy, creative, production, account service, and project management. Those skills and the chemistry of the team continue to shine through whether face-to-face or through a screen.
In what ways has this impacted the work-life balance of your employees and what steps have been taken to mitigate that?
It’s fair to say work-life balance has been a struggle at some point for everyone, no matter what level or department. It’s a new skill set we’ve all had to learn of setting realistic boundaries in order to properly recharge.
With many different modes of communication (video, email, slack, gchat, basecamp, etc), we’re striving to get back to basics with our time. We have an unwritten rule around taking a ‘Virtuous Pause’ during the 12-1pm lunch break, avoid client presentations on Monday, and ‘Focus Fridays’ where individuals are encouraged to block personal time to work or brainstorm vs. be in meetings.
We’ve also been of the mindset that if you are getting your work done it doesn’t matter where you are in the world - we’ve given the team flexibility.
Given that each work environment can look a bit differently, what has helped in creating a cohesive working relationship with clients?
Video conferencing has leveled the playing field in an interesting way but because we’ve always had clients all over the globe, virtual meetings and 1:1’s have always been common practice. We’ve definitely grown closer to our current and new clients over the last 18-months just by sharing the experience of pivoting marketing objectives, virtual productions, and launching new products in the middle of a pandemic.
What changes that have been made over the past year do you see sticking around for years to come?
Workplace flexibility and the importance of fostering agency culture!
We’ll continue to empower our employees to deliver their best, which means leaning into different ways of working, and prioritizing meaningful experiences of inclusion and fun amongst our group.