Bo Westergaard and Ina Kaso are the type of employees vital to any shipowner running a fleet.
As Eagle Bulk Shipping's chief commercial officer and senior operations manager, respectively, they work hand in glove fixing cargoes and ensuring they arrive smoothly.
If an issue emerges, Westergaard can stand up and shout a question to Kaso at her station some five metres away at Eagle Bulk’s office in Stamford, Connecticut.
That is how it worked before Covid-19 struck, anyway.
What followed was months of Westergaard supervising fixtures from his home in nearby Norwalk while Kaso engaged in Microsoft Teams calls from her place in Greenwich, hoping her two-year-old child would not become part of the conversation.
“Don’t forget to lock the door, basically, or there’s screaming in the background,” she told TradeWinds in an interview at the Stamford headquarters, to which Eagle Bulk returned on 3 May after a six-month hiatus.
Shipping companies in and around the Greater New York area are returning to their offices amid the push for widespread vaccinations for Covid-19, although not all of them are doing so at Eagle Bulk’s pace.
Some, particularly in hard-hit Manhattan, are maintaining the remote-work protocols until the end of the summer, with plans to resume commuting in early September.
The takeaway from Eagle Bulk and chief executive Gary Vogel is that working from home went surprisingly well, but it is no substitute for being back in the office environment.
“I was really pleasantly surprised by the level at which the company was able to operate and execute, both through the dedication and resiliency of our people, and also technology — I can’t imagine if we had to do this 20 or 25 years ago,” Vogel said.
“But, having said that, I firmly believe we are much better off in the office together. This is a fast-moving business based on collaboration and information flow. And being back with the staff now, I see a tremendous difference in the level of execution.”
Much the same message came from Westergaard, Vogel’s colleague of more than 20 years dating back to when they worked together at the private Clipper Group.
“It took a bit of getting used to being at home all the time and not being able to stand up and yell across the desk,” Westergaard said. “After that, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it did work.
“But being back in the office, there’s no doubt we’re better than we ever will be at home. The value that springs from reaching over to Ina [to ask], ‘Is that ship coming today or tomorrow?’, it prevents a lot of things from falling through the cracks.”
Or, as Kaso put it: “Something that you can cover in five minutes with Bo across the desk became a phone call, and the phone call was not five minutes, it was probably half an hour.”
Eagle Bulk’s return to its Stamford office came under social-distancing protocols, with desks spaced and masks in use at first. They were largely gone by the time TradeWinds made its visit — although they still remain in use around the building.
The full staff of 55 was not present at the time, with about 10 workers appearing every other day as the owner proceeded cautiously with the transition, Vogel said.
A survey of selected shipping companies seemed to suggest that those in Connecticut, which is less congested and dependent on mass transit than New York, were more likely to be back in the office.
Indeed, nearby tanker brokerage Charles R Weber — in Greenwich — returned to the office in May 2020 and never left, even when cases began to surge in November last year.
“There’s been zero contamination from working in the office, so whatever we did, it seems to have worked,” co-managing director Christos Alexandrou said.
Shipowners in Manhattan, on the other hand, appear more willing to wait until the end of the summer and come back after the Labor Day holiday, which falls on 6 September this year.
For the Eagle Bulk employees, the timing is right.
“I’ll speak for myself, and I think for most of the people on my team, when I say that I don’t think anyone felt uncomfortable,” Westergaard said.
“It felt like the time to come back. The pace at which we came back, I think it felt right.”
Kaso added: “It feels normal. It’s actually nice to have the feeling of normal again.”
