Advertising firm Ogilvy and Mather plans to use the Olympic travel disruption as a launch pad to shift employee behaviour towards “more flexible and agile” ways of working, PM has learned.

The employer’s change programme will use this summer’s large-scale events such as the Olympics and Wimbledon to nudge staff to think differently about how and where they work.

Staff will be encouraged to come to work in early or late shifts in order to avoid rush hour, and have dinner at each other’s houses in a ‘Come Dine With Me’ initiative, as well as exploring options to working from home or use hot desking.

Employees are set to adopt a two-shift ‘relay’ with the first set of workers starting at 7am and finishing at 3pm to 3.30pm, and the second shift running from 12pm to 8.30pm. The employer is offering breakfast and dinner to those taking part and will be running a Twitter travel account to offer advice and tips to avoid hotspots.

Julia Ingall, group HR director at the firm, said that the idea to use the summer’s events as a focus for change had come following discussions between HR and facilities about how to deal with Olympic travel congestion.

“We worked initially with a TfL consultant on how to get people to work on time and to do their job,” said Ingall. “But we also have a behavioural economic unit who looked at what the legacies would be from this change; how we could turn this from being a quite difficult disruptive period to something positive.

"The behaviours we wanted to embrace are a more flexible, agile approach to how we work, getting people to think about work as something they produce rather than a place they go. We also wanted a more digital savvy approach, so we wanted people to be more aware of social media, which is why we have the Twitter travel account.”

Another factor for the company in exploring these approaches is that it is growing quickly and soon may risk running out of office space, Ingall said. “So we really want people to be more comfortable and understand that the place of your work can be a lot more agile than we are currently. We asked, how can we become more collaborative?” she said.

This is where the ‘Come Dine With Me’ idea came in, Ingall explained. “Three or four people can go to someone’s home to eat and work together using cloud technology, which has given us more freedom.
 
"The benefit of this is about the ability of people to work more collaboratively, it also breaks down some of those barriers between people because you don’t always get to know people in the workplace.”

In addition, a room at the firm’s offices will be set-aside throughout the summer with a big screen for viewing sporting highlights. Employees are encouraged to bring their team, clients and family to the room to enjoy the historic coverage.