My thoughts on Accenture moving to a 5-day in-office work week

Hello, this is Oden.

The other day, I saw the news that Accenture has announced a policy to make working from the office 5 days a week the standard starting in June 2025.
To be precise, they stated that "working from the client site or the company office will be the standard."
This is a major policy shift from the previous recommendation of working from the office 3 days a week.

"It finally happened..."
Honestly, that is what I thought.

Many people have the impression that the consulting industry offers a high degree of flexibility in how you work, and I was one of them.
However, with this announcement, I feel like the gap between the industry's "ideal" and its "reality" has been brought to the forefront once again.

What will change? The policy of working from the office as a standard and its background

Accenture's new policy is "5 days a week in the office as a standard." It applies to all employees.
The location for working is either the client's office or Accenture's own office.
In other words, working from home will be treated as an exception.

Previously, following the COVID-19 pandemic, Accenture had recommended working from the office 3 days a week.
That will change significantly with this new policy shift.

The background seems to include reasons such as strengthening collaboration with clients, the importance of communication between employees, and improving work efficiency through face-to-face interaction.
It is true that there are many situations in the field where you feel that "it is faster to work face-to-face," and I understand that there is a certain value to working from the office.

However, I suspect many people feel surprised and confused by the sudden shift from an environment where they could work flexibly to one where "working from the office is the standard."

The "pressure to work from the office" spreading through the consulting industry

I believe Accenture's policy is a move that will also influence the entire industry.

This is because at other consulting firms as well, there are increasing voices saying that "3 days a week in the office is the standard" or "being stationed at a client site is the norm." In my own circle, there are quite a few people lamenting, "For us, it's practically full-time in the office, too."

The consulting profession is one where the distance to the client is extremely close.
Therefore, if the client says, "I want you to come to the office," it is difficult to refuse.

In other words, the degree of flexibility in how you work is heavily influenced not by the "company," but by the "project."
This is the difficulty of working in consulting.

Actually, I wrote an article the year before last about the trend of returning to the office, and honestly, it is turning out exactly as I described.

My own conflict after changing jobs with the goal of being able to "work anywhere"

One of the reasons I changed jobs from a manufacturer to consulting was that I wanted to be able to "work anywhere."
I longed for a way of working where I wasn't tied to a specific location and could work according to my own lifestyle.

But the reality was different.
Currently, I am on a business trip 5 days a week and stationed at a client's site.
While there are projects that allow for remote work in theory, in practice, there are many projects that "assume you will be in the office," and the range of choices I can make myself is limited.

And seeing Accenture's announcement this time, I felt a feeling akin to resignation, thinking,
"Maybe this industry is going to be like this everywhere after all."

Of course, I understand that due to the nature of the work, there are times when it is easier to proceed by being in the office.
But for someone like me who once jumped into this world aiming for a "flexible way of working," it is a slightly lonely reality.

How to work in the era of full-time office attendance?

So, how should we work in the coming era?

What I thought upon hearing this new policy is that the question is not "remote or office," but rather
"whether you can work in a way that delivers value in any environment."

If you insist on full remote work, the range of projects available to you will certainly narrow.
On the other hand, working only in the office can be physically and mentally exhausting.

That is why I believe it is important not to fall into the binary of "remote equals easy" and "office equals hard,"
but rather to focus on how to face the environment at any given time and find meaning in it for yourself.

I am currently rethinking what a way of working that I can be satisfied with looks like, even with "5 days a week in the office/on-site."
I feel that there is no such thing as an ideal environment out there; you have to choose it and shape it yourself.

In conclusion

Accenture's policy of 5 days a week in the office has had a significant impact both inside and outside the industry.
This trend may spread to other firms in the future.

However, even as the environment changes, I think it is important to keep thinking about how you want to work and what kind of value you want to provide.
Even if the way we work changes, we don't want to let our "personal core" be swayed by it.

I would be happy if this incident serves as an opportunity for all of you to think about "how to work from now on."

Thank you for reading until the end!