Investment bank Peel Hunt looks for ideal office-home work balance

Bank looks for ideal office-home work balance: Peel Hunt hopes to ‘heal the scars that the pandemic left behind’

Peel Hunt boss Steven Fine plans to let his 250 staff choose a ‘balance that works for them’

Peel Hunt is running an experiment to draw staff back to the office and ‘heal the scars that the pandemic left behind’.

The City investment bank, run by broking veteran Steven Fine, is asking all workers who are not vulnerable, ill or on holiday to come back to their desks for two weeks when lockdown restrictions lift to boost morale and inject money back into the local economy.

Following the fortnight back in the office, Fine plans to let its 250 staff choose a ‘balance that works for them’, but he wants to ‘break the pattern of working from home and bring back face-to-face human interaction’. 

He told the Daily Mail: ‘I’ve been surprised to see so many companies subsequently announce major changes to their future working practices.

‘From deferring lease extension decisions and reducing their office footprint to – in a growing number of cases – committing to a permanent shift towards remote working, it seems advocates for the office are slim on the ground.

‘But I believe no one should be making major business decisions such as this based on short-term data alone.’

While major City institutions such as HSBC and Lloyds Bank have committed to axing office space, Peel Hunt opened a new larger headquarters on London’s Liverpool Street earlier this year. 

Fine said: ‘To heal the scars that the pandemic left behind, we need the lifeblood of every town and city – its workforce – to return to the office.

‘We need them to breathe life back into the restaurants, cafes, bars and shops that depend on them, to reconnect with one another face to face, to share ideas and make new connections – and, ultimately, to drive the economic recovery that we all want to see.’