Square Mile builder: It’s time to get London back up and running
“I’ve been getting on trains for six weeks and not once have I felt uncomfortable because I wasn’t able to socially distance,” says Square Mile construction firm Mace’s chief executive Mark Reynolds.
The company, which is headquartered in Moorgate in the heart of the City, is slowly encouraging staff to return to work at the office, and Reynolds has been right at the front of the queue.
“I’ve been coming two or three days a week for a little while, but that will probably go up to four days a week soon”, he tells City PM
And for Reynolds, Boris Johnson’s announcement that firms would have “more discretion” to bring staff back safely from August came not a moment too soon.
“At the moment the pendulum has swung too far the other way,” he says. “We really need to get the economy back up and running and get London back up and running.
“We’re saying that staff should work from home if they can, but we do need to increase face to face collaboration, so are asking them to find a balance that works for them between both.”
“Ultimately, if the City is not getting back up and running, that’s a real issue for us in the long term,” he adds.
Return to work is a balancing act
Reynolds acknowledges that his firm’s return to work guidance to employees is a little “self-contradictory”. But he stresses that it has to be in order to balance the government’s official health and safety advice with the desire to get more people back into the office.
Currently, up to 70 people work in Mace’s Square Mile headquarters, which has a capacity of 900. But Reynolds expects that number to increase in the coming weeks.
Purely through social distancing, the firm can accommodate 240 staff in its office. If it adds protective screens as planned it will be able to house 500 safely.
By reconfiguring its desk arrangements, the CEO explains, that figure will grow again to 600.
In addition, some 9,500 people are working on Mace’s construction sites, down from 11,000 before the pandemic struck.
September ‘acid test’ for Square Mile return
September was likely to be an “acid test” for the firm, Reynolds says, with schools set to return at the beginning of the month. That potentially frees up parents who have been homeschooling their children for months.
Citing some tech firms, which have said that staff will not have to return until 2021, he explains that he cannot really see much difference between September and January.
“Either the office is closed until we have a vaccine, which isn’t sustainable really for anybody, or you find a flexible and appropriate way to bring people back when that comes within the guidance so that they’re safe, so that as far as we can, we can begin to return to normal.”
According to Reynolds, the encouragement to return to the office has been particularly well-received by Mace’s younger employees, many of whom have been working from crowded flats for nearly six months.
The Square Mile construction company has put in a booking system that allows teams to all be in the office at the same time, to help bring back more of a collaborative approach to work.
In the long term, the majority of Mace staff have expressed a wish to work from the office for at least half the week.
Mace is currently in the process of considering how to write this new-found flexibility into employees’ contracts, a process which Reynolds hopes to be complete by the end of the year.
“It’s all about finding a balance,” he muses. “We need to enable people to come in and do what they need to do face to face, but perhaps in the future they won’t travel in two hours just to come and sit at a desk and do their emails all day.”