A new location and a new outlook: introducing our new Slough office

Haines Watts has had a long and successful journey in Slough, so we’re overjoyed to announce the opening of our brand-new office, a new approach to team working and the start of a new chapter in the history of our Slough team.

Paul Simmons, Managing Partner, talks us through his experiences of working in Slough for the last 22 years and his vision for the future of the Haines Watts Slough office.  

I joined the Haines Watts Slough office in April 1988. The firm already had a highly successful history, having expanded from its first office in Slough to having over 40 offices throughout the country.

For a long time, Slough was the only Haines Watts office in the M25 area. During the noughties, myself and Michael Davidson decided that change was needed if we were going to maximise our opportunities in the South East region.

There were opportunities within the firm and myself and Michael became managing partners, with a clear vision of expanding the firm out across the M25, Thames Valley and London.

There are now six Haines Watts offices within the M25, with our Central London HQ in Holborn being the biggest. However, Slough is still very much at the heart of our South East operations.

As a location, Slough is on the western edge of our M25 patch, but our proximity to the motorway, to London and to the rest of the Thames Valley business network has meant that we’re still an important hub for the firm.  

Why Slough is the ideal location

The original 1940s Slough office was situated on the Slough Trading Estate, then moved to the town centre, and moved again to the edge of the trading estate in the 1970s.

That 1970s building is the one I started working in back in 1988, and it’s the location we’d called home until this year and our big move.

With Slough being the original home of Haines Watts, we have a big attachment to the place – despite the bad press the town got from its association with David Brent and The Office. But, regardless of what Ricky Gervais might think, Slough is actually on the up in 2020.

Key benefits of Slough as a location include:

• Great road links to London and the rest of the M25 area

• A new £3bn regeneration project for the whole town centre

• The new CrossRail train station opening up Slough to more commuters

• A proposed rail link to Heathrow airport calling at Slough

Aside from the infrastructure benefits of Slough, we have a very strong team here and a great skill base. We have an especially strong audit team, in particular, and, in terms of recruitment, we’ve got access to the whole M25 area and beyond, once these new rail links come into play.  

Moving to our new office

We looked at 36 different office spaces before deciding on our new Slough HQ building, and I’m confident that we’ve chosen an office that has some real flexibility and longevity built into it.

The new office is in the middle of the Slough Trading Estate and surrounded growing, exciting businesses. We’re on a business park with the key banks on the trading estate, so it’s a good location, with great parking for clients, and a very nice modern building that will serve us well for years to come.  

Designing an office for activity based working

Blue Jelly design consultants worked on the refit and revamp of our Holborn office and we’ve partnered with them again on the design, layout and workflow of the new Slough building.

We knew that we wanted activity based working to be at the heart of our office design, and that has driven much of the decision-making. At the old Slough office, you only had two choices when it came to your workspace – a desk or a meeting room. In the new office, you can now sit where you need to for that day’s work, with a range of different spaces to choose from.

As a firm, we’d already gone paperless and had moved our systems to the cloud, so that’s stood us in very good stead for a more agile, flexible way of working and embracing the activity based working methodology.

Core benefits of the new office include:

• A large staff cafe – we have a large cafe that seats up to 16 people. It’s bright and airy and will be great for informal meetings.

• High-agile workspaces – we have ‘high agile’ spaces with raised desks and stools, with a TV and monitor screen that you can plug into to show screens etc.

• Low agile workspaces – we also have ‘low agile’ workspaces, which consist of separate informal seating areas for client catch-ups or group working.

• Private booth – there’s also a private booth area that people can work in, if they need quiet or privacy for sensitive conversations or confidential client meetings etc.

• A shower room – having a shower at the office is great. If people cycle in (like I do), or go for a run, they can shower and freshen up and quickly be ready to get back to work.

• A clear-desk policy – all client work is paperless now, reducing the need for hard-copy documents, with lockers for everyone and no pedestals cluttering up the space.

• A focus on proper breaks – we don’t eat at our desks now, and encourage our people to get a proper break, de-stress and look after their mental health.

• A green office – all lights are now on sensors, so we don’t use unnecessary power when areas are not in use, and we’ve set up a recycling centre in the cafe area, so the team can recycle as much of their rubbish and food waste as possible.

We wanted to invest in the office and our people and having these new areas has changed the fundamental usage of the desks and workspaces we have available to us.  

Making the office COVID-19 compliant

We first started planning the new office design several months before the coronavirus crisis hit, but we obviously have to flex our usage of the office to meet the required elements of social distancing and health and safety.

Circular movement around the office, rather than lots of dull straight corridors, was a central part of Blue Jelly’s design, and that’s worked in our favour when looking at how to meet the COVID-19 requirements. We have a one-way circular route around the office space, allowing us to socially distance when moving between areas, rooms and workspaces.

The office was formally opened last week, so if people need to come into the office for meetings or face-to-face catch-ups then that can now happen. We’ve had a new partner join in the past few weeks and they’ve been able to meet people in person. For me, that’s so important – you can’t always introduce people and form a human connection via Zoom meetings etc.

With many staff still homeschooling children and dealing with other responsibilities during the ongoing crisis, my feeling is that 1st September will be the proper reset date. From September onwards, I think we’ll see a return to some form of normality.  

A new chapter for Slough

The new office is probably bigger than Slough’s immediate need, but we wanted to give ourselves the potential to grow – and also offer London and other regional staff another place to work.

I see our new Slough home being very much a hub for the M25 area and the wider firm too. We’ve got the space, the flexible work areas and the cafe and meeting rooms to cater to just about anything that’s thrown at us.

Once it’s possible, we’re looking forward to welcoming clients and colleagues into our new space to show them how Haines Watts operates in the 21st century, and beyond.  

We're excited about the potential in Slough and future growth. If you're looking for a new Slough Accountant or business advisor, get in touch with our team.