ENGLAND

MARCUS ANSLEM

MURRAY 1986-1991

LONDON – SEPTEMBER 2020

London was in lockdown from March, overnight we were all working from home, kids learning from home, not mixing households, not going out other than to shop once a week.

Pretty much confined to the house and garden for several months. Hindsight is 20/20 vision and it’s easy to criticise the decisions made, but unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions and I certainly wouldn’t have liked to have been the CEO of the UK the last few months. I work in the Mergers & Acquisitions world and life at my firm is usually pretty full on. The biggest impact of the pandemic from a work perspective was definitely less interaction with people and not being on so many planes. In a ‘normal’ working environment, I would be frequently meeting people for meals, meetings and travelling; suddenly all of that just stopped. Although it was nice not travelling so much, interacting with people over Zoom and Teams just doesn’t cut it for me. It’s no substitution for face-to-face engagement and that little bit of extra magic you get through physical meetings. It is very hard to build new relationships with people and clients online. From a personal perspective, spending more time with the family was great. Instead of getting home at 8pm or 9pm during the week (and eating dinner late) when most of my kids are asleep, I have had the opportunity to eat early (much healthier) and be with them virtually every evening.

This part of the lockdown experience was memorable for all the right reasons. I think there will be a ‘new normal’ where people travel less for meetings, but still travel and where people go to the office less, but still go to the office. In time, I’d expect there to be queues at Heathrow again and full planes (albeit less of them in the air at any one time), but that we’ll all think twice about whether we need to fly for that one meeting and equally on days where we don’t have meetings. I expect people will be quicker and more willing to work from home. My money is on this happening during 2022.

If I could keep everything the way it was before Covid-19 arrived, but be home every night at 7pm and fly a lot less, I’d take that. Ultimately, I’d like to get back to a place where my home is my home and my office is my office and there is a separation between the two.

But, I will definitely be more open to working from home and to having members of our team working at home The pandemic has showed me that you do need to physically be with your team to get that buzz and benefit from group thinking but equally, time apart is important to give you space and to actually get your head down and get work done.

Captured By Old Millhillians