Nine reseller and MSP bosses on if their staff want to return to the office
With the UK government setting out a roadmap to reopen the economy after three periods of national lockdown, busineses are gearing up for some return to "normality" after more than a year of remote working under Boris Johnson's stay-at-home advice.
The WFH vs office debate has split the tech sector since the pandemic first took hold, with some tech giants claiming they would embrace remote working for the long-term and others now imposing limits on how much staff can work from home.
Some UK tech businesses have sensed a shift in attutude among their workforce, with many now wanting to trade in a permentant work-from-home setup with some time in the office.
Resellers and MSPs including SysGroup and Bechtle have made significant investments in their office spaces as they begin to make plans to welcome staff back into an office-based setting.
CRN has spoken to a host of industry bosses from across the UK to find out how much value they place on the office environment and if there's been a shift in attitude among their workforce towards remote working (the topic was also the subject of a panel debate CRN hosted last week featuring high-growth, high-profit channel partners - view highlights here).
SysGroup
Commentator: Adam Binks, CEO
Quote:
In terms of my own personal opinion, I always said offices will still feature and play a huge part in what we do moving forward and the announcement regarding our Manchester is obviously testament to that.
We are a dynamic, diverse, fast-paced tech company and we've got the culture you'd expect that goes with that... Coming back to the office is really going to help drive that forward.
We work open plan at SysGroup, myself included. We all sit on the floor with the teams. Not that you're listening into people but you can't help but overhear conversations sometimes and it's so easy to walk over to someone's desk who might be struggling with something and offer some advice, or suggest a new way of doing something.
You get all that back and you can do it in minutes rather than through scheduled Teams calls. Teams will play a part going forward, certainly for scheduled meetings with people, but I think for the long-term, business will continue to be done on a face-to-face basis and you get the most value from it.
It's all about finding our feet - let's go back to the office, get to know each other again and then collectively as a team find out what works for us. And you know what? If home working doesn't work for us at all or a split environment doesn't work, then we're going to have to say no we can't do it.
If it works perfectly, then why not do more of it? But we've got to find that out along the way.
Context:
SysGroup's CEO voiced his strong opposition towards opening offices too early in a CRN panel debate last summer. At the time he said that 91 per cent of the MSP's staff are happy to continue working from home for at least the next three months, and said there were no plans to reopen offices until at least October.
2021 has however brought with it a shift in attitude, with Binks telling CRN that the majority of SysGroup staff now want to get back to the office.
Ensono
Commentator: Barney Taylor, managing director Europe
Quote:
I can't wait to be back. I think it will have a supremely positive impact. You can have a lovely strategy and vision at one end, you can have all the corporate governance and financial controls at the other end, but in the middle you need people to build a business.
I don't think we're ever going to see our offices back to the levels that we've seen before. So we will be in a hybrid working model that fits in with people's work-life balance and I think people will have the choice to pick and choose where they want to work, which is going to have a really positive effect on us to be honest.
We don't really have our offices open at the moment - we have very, very limited numbers of people coming in where they have difficult working environments or home environments.
We're really working towards that June date. We're not rushing back; we want to be very cautious and our offices remain closed and as soon as it's safe to do so in line with guidelines, then we'll take that as it comes. But we've waited for this long, we'll be patient and work towards what looks like a June date from the government.
Context:
Taylor spoke to CRN following Ensono's acquisition of UK firm Amido and its sale to private equity giant KKR. He said that a return to face-to-face meetings and office-based collaboration will help drive its consultancy business forward.
Paragon Micro UK
Commentator: Darren Brodrick, MD
Quote:
On a personal level, I need to be around other people and feel part of a team, working remotely has been great but I need that personal connection.
Everyone I speak to is asking ‘when will the office be open?' and what's actually really exciting for us is that we move into a new office in Central Milton Keynes in June. We opened a warehouse and integration facility up in Rotherham back March, so this will complete the first step of our plan.
The office has to be the heartbeat of your business; people want to have those on-the-fly conversations, talk about what's going on in their worlds, gossiping over smoking breaks and all that fun stuff, (I'm a non-smoker for the record!). I think it would be a pretty sad world if office culture wasn't at the centre of everyone's thinking.
Don't forget from a Paragon perspective, the UK business was setup right at the beginning of the pandemic. We still have people that haven't physically met each other and I've only met about 50 per cent of the team. We're building a business where we want to hire experienced people and empower them to decide if they want to come into an office or not, so it's a choice model. If we get the culture piece right, then I expect to have a lively office environment.
Context:
Paragon Micro appointed Brodrick as UK MD at the beginning of the year. The US VAR has opened up a new office in Milton Keynes as well as a new integration centre in Sheffield as it looks to grow its presence this side of the Atlantic.
Click through to the next page to see which VAR has moved into a new UK head office
Nine reseller and MSP bosses on if their staff want to return to the office
Bechtle UK
Commentator: James Napp, MD
Quote:
Are you planning a return to the office for your staff?
We are taking a pragmatic approach here. Ideally, with our new Living Space now fully open, we would have done one big launch party, but the situation hasn't allowed for that. We did a series of office tours for the majority of colleagues last week in small groups and the feedback was extremely pleasing. We are working through a phased return and it's lovely to see how many of the team are embracing their new working environment already - we are getting some of the ‘old' buzz back!
After months of working to create a fresh, collaborative and inspiring environment, it's so good to see life being breathed into the space. We're working on a hybrid plan, which we will implement later on in the year. Every aspect of the new building is set up for full hybrid working and we have invested heavily in a diverse range of high-quality, state-of-the-art meeting room spaces - so we are fully prepared. We don't feel a need to rush into anything as it's extremely important to get that right, both for our employees and the business.
How much weight/value do you place on office-based culture?
We are strong believers in community. Our ‘work hard, play hard' approach lends itself well to being together, feeding off each other, learning together and enjoying the benefits of ad-hoc collaboration, as well as the social aspects which come with being in the same space. We prefer talking about a ‘Living Space' rather than a traditional office, as we believe it's important to offer something more than just a row of desks for people to return to. People have been working in the comfort of their own homes, so we need to offer something at least as good as that with lots of quiet working spaces, lounge areas, facilities and amenities. We did that in Manchester and we have carried on that theme down south. We would rather create a space that colleagues want to spend time in, rather than feel mandated to come into.
It's also fair to say that remote working and video certainly has its place and people have proven that many tasks can be done effectively from home or remotely. We do feel however, that there is still much to be gained from being together as a team.
Has there been a shift in attitude among your workforce towards wanting to return to the office?
We have certainly seen a shift since the start of the pandemic and more people are now keen to get back to some form of normality, which includes re-discovering a greater degree of separation between home and work life. Typically as human beings, we tend to want what we don't have, so we are definitely seeing some of that at play too. On balance, the feedback we have had is that people would like some kind of mix and we will work hard to get that right.
Context:
German VAR Bechtle has been quickly expanding its business in the UK. The firm opened a new location in Manchester in 2019 and only this week moved into a new HQ in Chippenham, just minutes away from its previous office. The new digs are two and a half times larger than its old office and has the capacity for 150-200 staff.
Content+Cloud
Commentator: Peter Sweetbaum, CEO
Quote:
The ones that want to work from home permanently are in the very small minority. The ones that want to go into the office two or three days a week are in the vast majority and the ones that want to work five days a week in the office, are again, in a very small minority.
The only reason we want people to back in the office is not because of productivity, or to be big brother, it is simply because we want people to be culturally aligned, have a good experience, socially engaged, support new starters, help people develop and enable cross functional engagement. It has nothing to do with watching over people or productivity at all, because we trust our people and they're doing incredibly well.
We did give up Bernard St, our Russell Square office, because it was a big expense and we just happened to get a break clause which was up in September, so we took it last summer. So we didn't have an office but we did some work on the old Content+Code office. We're keeping the other offices; we're not looking at closing things down particularly.
Context:
Content+Cloud rebranded from IT Lab last year, with Sweetbaum claiming the new name better represents its range of capabilities. The acquisitive MSP took its first steps into the US at the start of this year with its acquisition of Sipcom.
Saepio
Commentator: Rob Pooley, solutions director
Quote:
My gauge is that people are looking to get the best of both worlds and to have a relative amount of time in the office and then a comfortable amount of time at home.
People will want to go to the office on a day when everyone else is in as well. It will be the whole company goes to the office on Monday, for example, and then everyone's working from home Tuesday, Wednesday, and everyone's back in the office Thursday. That's where I think it could go, which is actually not great for a business owner, because you've then got to make sure you've got an office that can accommodate everybody.
We've got about eight or so people in the office each day now. So it's very, very sparse in there. But it's at least a decent human interaction going on.
It will be nice to get that office culture back again and the chats over cups of tea in the breakout areas and the random collaboration that just doesn't happen remotely. Now you've got a conveyor belt of Zoom and Teams calls, so you don't get those impromptu ideas which can end up being the best ideas you've ever had. That impromptu stuff is less common, so I think that needs to come back.
Context:
Three of Saepio's managing directors fell ill with Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic including Pooley. After a year which Pooley described as "without a doubt the hardest year of my life", Saepio is back in recruitment mode and gearing up for organic growth.
Click through to find out what CAE Technology Services' Justin Harling thinks of the office enviornment
Nine reseller and MSP bosses on if their staff want to return to the office
CAE Technology Services
Commentator: Justin Harling, CEO
Quote:
It appears to be factually accurate that short term productivity does not drop, in fact it probably increases with full time working from home, but this is at the considerable longer-term expense of work-life balance and mental wellbeing.
All the tools made available greatly enhance the experience of being able to work together while remote, but there is no substitute to being able to collaborate in an office, where whole teams are physically together and can benefit from fully interactive human behaviours.
Blurring lines between work and home lives requires both sides of the equation. Work can encroach on home if the office is able to deliver an element of social interaction that positively reinforces what should be a balance.
Flexibility has its advantages and can support home life, but a commute can be a good way for a mind to work through the day and arrive at home having moved into the right place to enjoy a separated evening.
(Harling's comments first appeared here)
Context:
CAE acquired a new head office in Hemel Hempstead last year as it moved from its smaller premesis in Watford. The relocation came a year and a half after Harling led a management buyout of the business.
Performanta
Commentator: Guy Golan, CEO
Quote:
We have people who are very technical in Performanta. When a techy person comes to me and says ‘I think it's time to go to the office and have a beer or two with someone', then I think that shows we have reached a point where the human interaction is so much at a miss.
I think my impression talking to my employees is that they are ready to go back to the office… but not a full-time office presence because that's not something that we would require. But that human interaction on an ongoing basis is absolutely missed across the company and across people.
Our South African office is pretty much business as usual and is getting into a business-as-usual situation. We have a team of 60 people in the UK, it's not a big team and in any case, pre COVID, it was pretty much people work from home and people come to the office.
I think we're going to go back to the same type of structure of weekly meetings that will be at the office and weekly gatherings at the office. And then when people feel like it's time for them to land at the office and have some human interaction, then they can freely do that.
Context: Performanta recently sold a significant stake to Beech Tree private equity and recently made its first acquisition under its new owner.
QBS Software
Commentator: Dave Stevinson, CEO
Quote:
As a company we are continuing to work remotely for the foreseeable future in all of our locations. Over the last year we have worked successfully in a remote capacity but strongly believe that in general we work better when we are together in person.
There is a lot of pent up demand to get back to the office and see our co-workers and friends face to face, however this process will be managed in accordance with government guidelines and paying the strictest attention to safety.
There seems to be a change in sentiment overall from what I read in the press with a lot of the large technology companies favouring working back in the office.
Context: QBS expanded its business across Europe in 2020 with acquisitions. Stevinson previously told CRN that changes to the workplace will be the trend that shapes the channel the most in 2021.