As companies continue to ditch close contact for telecommuting, West Monroe Partners just announced it plans to open its expanded New York office in November, after an uncertain year of development.
Kevin Rooney, the company’s chief administrative officer, said the company’s more than 1,300-person team has been working remotely since March. But post-pandemic, he said the consultancy views the opportunity to work alongside colleagues in a state-of-the-art office as a way to drive top talent to West Monroe, particularly as the business aims to grow its local workforce by fivefold.
“I think people are still craving some of that face-to-face interaction,” Rooney told Built In. “So we are still betting on that as being part of our differentiator.”
Founded in 2002, West Monroe is a business and tech consultancy that helps customers digitize their operations.
Over the past seven years, Rooney said revenue at the employee-owned company has grown about 26 percent year over year. To meet demand, West Monroe announced about a year ago that it planned to grow its New York headcount to 750 people by 2025. At that time, the company had already run out of chairs at its Midtown Manhattan office. Last December, West Monroe announced it signed a 10-year lease at Worldwide Plaza, 825 Eighth Ave., effectively quadrupling its space.
But just a few months later, West Monroe went into lockdown.
“I distinctly remember the decision on March 13 to go completely virtual,” Rooney said. “We knew it was going to be different. But I don’t think anyone quite realized at that time how long it would go.”
The move to remote work changed West Monroe’s office plans. The city did not designate construction an essential service, which Rooney said delayed the office’s building schedule by a few months. Stalled supply chains also prevented AV equipment and other items from arriving on time, he said. A changed environment also called for an update to a few design and technological elements.
The consultancy plans to install touch-free hand sanitizers, additional AV equipment and thinned-out work stations, and to mark hallways as one-way routes. The building managers have updated the space’s ventilation system to circulate more air from outside. To track staff scheduling, West Monroe will deploy Salesforce’s Work.com software, which requires individuals to submit a health check before they’re able to reserve a workstation in the office. The company will only allow the office to reach about 25 percent capacity, and Rooney said he expects the space to remain filled by about half that amount.
“We want to meet people where they’re at,” Rooney said. “We’re opening the office on an optional basis, as a short-term space where they can be productive.”
In addition to building out its new workspace, Rooney said West Monroe remains committed to growing its local team. Today, the company counts about 125 employees in New York, and is hiring for data analysts, cybersecurity experts, product managers and more. The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated business’ digital transformation, he said, driving additional demand for West Monroe’s services — and a need for updated space. To that end, the consultancy is also building out expanded offices in Minneapolis and Chicago.
“We are committed to growth and we’re also committed to the relationships that we know can only be developed in-person, face-to-face,” Rooney said. “We know we’re not going back to the way we were six months or 12 months ago, and learned that certain things do work pretty well remotely. But we know that everything from mentoring to how we work with our clients in terms of being visible, and establishing those relationships, is really, really important.”
