By Collin Eaton and Chip Cutter
Texas got back to work faster than most states. It now serves as
a warning to the nation: reopening offices and other businesses may
be messier and more prone to disruption than many imagined.
The state faces a rapid increase of coronavirus cases and
hospitalizations. In Harris County, home to Houston and the world's
biggest energy companies, confirmed cases more than doubled since
the end of last month. The data has some big employers, including
LyondellBasell Industries NV and Shell Oil Co., sending workers
back home again to do their jobs remotely.
Yet even before the recent increases, there had been clear signs
all month that the patchwork reopening had problems.
Some companies brought back office workers in May or early June
only to face coronavirus outbreaks within days or weeks. Others
still can't figure out how to send people up a 50-story skyscraper.
Chevron says limiting riders on some elevators would create
dangerous crowding in lobbies, so the company is telling its masked
workers to refrain from speaking on the ride up.
Refilling Chevron Corp.'s two high-rise office towers in
downtown Houston is a daunting task. Of 7,000 workers, roughly 350
are back, says Dave Payne, the company's vice president of health,
environment and safety. The company has parking spaces for less
than a third of its employees. Previously, thousands had counted on
van pools and public buses, which are currently deemed too risky.
When arriving, employees must undergo a thermal imaging scan before
entering the building.
Mr. Payne acknowledged the situation could drag on into 2021.
"We're trying to be as flexible as possible," he said.
Many workers -- even unlikely ones -- are finding they can
perform their jobs from home.
As America shut down in March, Aniket Sanyal packed up four
computer monitors from his office in Houston. Since then, he has
helped drill a dozen oil wells in the North Sea, the Middle East
and beyond -- all while working in his home office. It is a feat
the 30-year-old petroleum engineer for Halliburton Co. says he and
his bosses didn't see coming at the start of 2020, nor did he
consider it possible years ago when he was working on drilling
rigs.
"I just needed a good internet connection," says Mr. Sanyal,
adding that his home-brewed espresso roast has kept him going on
12-hour shifts operating automated technologies, monitoring data
and supervising on-site drillers.
He expects to work from home part time even once Halliburton
fully reopens its offices. So far, roughly 700 of 3,000 Halliburton
corporate employees are back in the Houston headquarters. All plans
for bringing in more people are on hold until at least mid-July
amid the recent surge.
Halliburton said some employees based at one of its Houston
campuses have tested positive for Covid-19.
Even as the state's government rapidly reopened offices, bars,
restaurants, salons and gyms, many companies chose not to rush
their workers back into skyscrapers and sprawling suburban office
campuses. They are reluctant to do so when many workers remain
anxious about catching the virus and are productive enough at
home.
Coronavirus-related hospitalizations, which have been on the
rise for days, hit a record on Saturday of 5,523 people currently
hospitalized statewide.
Group 1 Automotive Inc., one of the nation's largest publicly
traded car dealership chains, kept its Houston headquarters open
for a small number of employees until mid-June, when an employee
contracted the virus, said Frank Grese, senior vice president of
human resources.
Most of Group 1's corporate employees have private offices,
making it easier to distance, and with hand sanitizer stations
spread around its floors, "the place looked like a pharmacy," says
Peter DeLongchamps, a senior vice president at the company. Outside
the office is the tougher environment, he said, because many people
in Texas grew complacent in their personal time, eschewing masks
and ignoring social distancing guidelines, which raises the risks
for co-workers during 9-to-5 life.
"Everyone got restless, and I think we've let our guard down,"
Mr. DeLongchamps says. "That's the one thing I would tell you about
Texas's reopening: There's a little bit too lax of an
attitude."
After the positive Covid test, Group 1 shut its headquarters for
two weeks as a precaution. It reopens Monday on a restricted basis,
with employees only coming in when absolutely necessary and
returning to remote work as quickly as possible, Mr. Grese says.
Wearing a mask will be required and the building won't have more
than 15% of the employees who usually work there.
Back-to-work plans vary widely, even in the same industry and
the same city, colored by executives' views of the virus, their
methods of tracking whether it is safe to return and their
political leanings.
British oil company BP PLC, with 4,000 workers in Houston,
hasn't yet begun its first phase of returning workers to its
regional headquarters, and doesn't see any reason it can't keep
workers at home until sometime next year, says Starlee Sykes, BP's
Houston-based regional president of Gulf of Mexico and Canada. In
2017, when Hurricane Harvey flooded BP's offices, many workers had
to do their jobs from home for six to nine months as the company
rebuilt.
"We've had a dry run for this," Ms. Sykes said of working from
home. "The technology did work then but it works a lot better
now."
Exxon Mobil Corp. is at less than half capacity at its giant
campus north of town. The energy giant initially reopened some
facilities to employees who had private offices with doors.
Now about 40% of its workers at the campus, which houses more
than 10,000, are able to return because building layouts were
altered and cleaning procedures enhanced, says spokesman Todd
Spitler. "We will make adjustments if and when they are needed," he
said.
Shell Oil Co., the U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell PLC,
last week suspended the first phase of its return to Houston
offices, with the most of its staff reverting back to working from
their homes.
Only critical staff running operations will still work from the
office. The company had allowed about 11% of its approximately
7,000 Houston area employees to come back to work earlier this
month, but reversed course as local case numbers climbed.
Others have reopened quicker. Most of the 2,300 employees at oil
refiner Phillips 66 have returned to the office, moving back in
phases since early May, with some working staggered shifts to
reduce overall occupancy levels, spokesman Dennis Nuss says.
French oil company Total SA is keeping most of its 1,000 Houston
employees at home for now. But the penthouse of its downtown
building houses the Petroleum Club of Houston, which remains open.
The club recently notified members that a Covid case was detected
in the tower. The club's storied Bayou Bengal Bar closes several
times a day for cleaning.
Those who have returned say the transition can be awkward. Shale
driller Parsley Energy Inc. in Austin recalled 60 of the roughly
250 people who work at its headquarters. But after three months of
isolation and video chats, in-house meetings -- which require face
masks -- can be unnerving, CEO Matt Gallagher says.
"No one has perfected the first hello yet. We don't know if you
bow or elbow bump," he said. Some have gone back to video chats
even with others in the office, simply because they prefer to see
the other person's unmasked face, which they can't do in a
conference room, he added.
In San Antonio, Margaret Malone, a 54-year-old manager in claims
operations at USAA, a financial-services company, volunteered to be
among the first to pilot a return of fewer than 10% of the
workforce to USAA's offices. She said she missed colleagues and the
separation between her job and her personal life that going in to
work provides.
She has her temperature taken upon entry, and wears a mask while
away from her desk, which has been relocated to another spot in the
office to allow for greater distancing. Any semblance of a normal
routine is welcome, she says. "It gives me more of a sense of
purpose: Hey, get up in the morning, get dressed, go to work."
With so few people in the office, parking is no longer a hassle,
and she says her few co-workers are cheerful. "Everybody's happy to
be here because I think they all are like, 'Thank God, something
normal in this crazy world,'" she says.
Still, office life is changed. The few corporate employees of
Dallas-based Remington Hotels, which operates properties for brands
such as Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt, who returned to the office
earlier this month can no longer get food delivered to their floor
and meetings with more than three people are still held via Zoom,
says Sloan Dean, the company's chief executive. At Academy Sports +
Outdoors, in Katy, Tex., corporate employees must take their trash
cans to a common bin to empty so that cleaning crews don't have to
go around to every cubicle, to protect both employees and
custodians.
Before workers can leave their buildings at the end of the day,
chemical company LyondellBasell Industries NV requires them to take
a survey on an app of people with whom they have come into close
contact, says Kim Foley, the company's vice president of health,
safety and environment.
Roughly a third of workers, fewer than 500 people, have been
back in Lyondell's main offices this month, in separate,
alternating groups, and the end-of-day polls would have helped with
contract tracing if the company had a case. But starting Monday
many of those workers will begin working from home again due to the
spiking coronavirus cases, she said.
In Texas, more than 143,300 cases of Covid-19 have been
reported, with 2,366 deaths across the state, according to the
Texas Department of State Health Services. Gov. Greg Abbott has
called the rate of spread unacceptable, saying "it must be
corralled." Last week, he hit pause on the next phase of the
state's reopening, and ordered bars to close and restaurants to
reduce seating capacity.
"Closing down Texas again will always be the last option," Gov.
Abbott said.
Peter Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine
at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said companies and civic
leaders should delay reopenings and keep workers at home until
cases trend down. "If these numbers continue to accelerate at this
rate, then we could basically be looking at Houston becoming the
worst-affected city in the U.S.," he says.
Most companies are acting more conservatively than the
government.
Dell Technologies Inc., based outside of Austin with 165,000
global employees, estimates only 50% of its workers will ever go
back to an office, even when the crisis passes. The company built
its own digital tool to analyze more than a dozen data points, such
as local cases and hospitalizations, to guide its decision.
"When the data tells us it's safe to return, we'll return," says
John Scimone, a senior vice president and chief security officer at
Dell.
That appears to be far off. "We are telling people that they
need to settle in," says Jennifer "JJ" Davis, senior vice president
of global communications. "We are predicting within our company
and, frankly, more broadly, that the future of work looks different
and that more people will stay home permanently."
Write to Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com and Chip Cutter at
chip.cutter@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 28, 2020 14:11 ET (18:11 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Grafico Azioni Shell (LSE:RDSA)
Storico
Da Mar 2024 a Apr 2024
Grafico Azioni Shell (LSE:RDSA)
Storico
Da Apr 2023 a Apr 2024