Every major holding company has told Adweek that it hasn’t issued an official mandate in writing across its entire network about employees returning to the office, but multiple sources across the holding companies told Adweek they’re facing pressure to go back at least three days a week. “The conversation is no longer about whether agencies that still have offices should encourage hybrid work—it’s about what exactly hybrid work means, to what extent it should be enforced and who gets an exemption,” reports Adweek.

“We are asking that all offices and operations insist on a return to the physical office space for a minimum of three days a week,” Alex Lubar, global president and COO of DDB Worldwide, an Omnicom company, wrote in a memo to the company in early December. While DDB is going with a rigid approach, Omnicom said its corporate policy is a “flexible, hybrid model” and is leaving it up to each agency to figure out what that means.

Adweek reports that “WPP said it was not instituting a company-wide mandate and will let individual agencies decide what’s best for their businesses and people.

“According to an email from Mark Read obtained by Adweek, WPP has announced that headquarter employees are expected to “work with their colleagues in (their) campuses and offices at least three days a week.” WPP could not offer any guidance to Adweek on how it will be enforced and who gets exemptions.”

“Read’s mandate impacts employees working on cross-agency teams who service some of WPP’s larger clients. By coming into the office, many of those employees still won’t be sitting face-to-face with their closest team members who are scattered across the network.”

More on the Adweek report here.

(Stock photo.)