Booking for skyscraper lifts may drive office workers up the wall
THE lead tenant of the City of London’s tallest skyscraper is planning to introduce an online lift-booking system to allow workers to social distance while getting back to the office.
Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, the US software giant, said his employees would have to reserve specific times to travel between floors as they get back to work.
Salesforce rents 10 floors in the 46-storey Heron Tower near Liverpool Street, which is notorious for long queues for its lifts, with employees bunching up in lobbies as they wait for one to arrive. Health officials have raised concerns that lifts could become petri dishes for the virus as workers return to the office, thwarting efforts to fight its spread.
“There’s only going to be so many people allowed in the elevator at one time because we’re going to have proper social distancing,” Mr Benioff said, adding that staff would be able to reserve lift space on an app. “This is going to be the new type of business.”
Mr Benioff, whose company was embroiled in a row over the skyscraper’s name in 2014 when it was denied permission to change it to “Salesforce Tower”, said that office life would drastically change as businesses seek to reopen, with staff grouped in teams to limit infections. “This is going to be a whole different type of work environment, you’re going to need a command centre, you’re going to need contact tracing, you’re going to need to have workforce triage, you’re going to need to have shift schedules,” he said.
Salesforce has around 2,000 staff in the UK, mostly based in London. Mr Benioff attributed the row over the tower’s name to a “misunderstanding”, saying: “I think that maybe our intentions at the time were not really well understood. We weren’t putting some big sign on the building, but that we’re using it more as kind of our address and intention to expand in Europe.”
Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, the former Virgin Money chief who recently stepped down as Salesforce’s UK boss, said last year that talking to staff in queues for the lifts were a useful way to measure the pulse of her staff.
What does the future hold for the skyscraper? The lifts are notoriously crowded and a breeding ground for infection. The US company Salesforce, which rents 10 floors in the 46-storey Heron Tower near Liverpool Street, has told its employees that they are going to have to reserve specific times to use the lifts, so as to ensure as much space in them as possible.
If getting to floor 46 is going to be like flying on an aeroplane, why not go all the way and issue tickets? There could also be a waiting room and security (to ensure everyone is fully masked), entertainment and – most important of all – a trolley service onboard. If a free newspaper and a complimentary glass of champagne become the new standard for inter-floor travel, no one will ever take the stairs again.