Who needs an office? Well, the Prime Minister I guess. Your accountant, perhaps. The CEO of a corporation with multiple divisions for sure. But if you’re an agile company producing content, designs, web-apps or software as a service do you really need to have all your troops all lined up ready for battle at 9am every morning five days a week?
Freelance Advisor has always tried to promote home working as a flexible, sustainable and more productive option for 21st century working and this week Seth Godin, Hive Logic and Chris Ashworth have all made excellent points about the failings of the traditional office.
“If we were starting this whole office thing today, it’s inconceivable we’d pay the rent/time/commuting cost to get what we get. I think in ten years the TV show ‘the Office’ will be seen as a quaint antique.
“When you need to have a meeting, have a meeting. When you need to collaborate, collaborate. The rest of the time, do the work, wherever you like.”
Of course, some business need a front door, a reception desk and a Real World presence, but Ashworth makes a very compelling case for hiring flexibly — even for employees handling support calls over the telephone.
Ashworth was hiring for a new Customer Support role and instead of offering a desk and rigid office hours Ashworth gave the choice to sign up to work units as small as a single day, with only one day advance notice and with hours to suit the worker (not the boss).
Previously support queries would have to wait until 9am for a response and, with web users encountering problems at all times of the day or night, that could mean a long wait for a response in the majority of cases. If your users use your services outside of office hours that’s when their problems will occur, people will fire off an email as soon as they have a problem, they won’t wait till the next day when they think you’re able to respond. The result, for Ashworth’s QLab 2 business at least, was a significant reduction in the average and mean response times to support queries:
Ashworth’s new employee was also so happy with the arrangement that he turned down an $80,000 dollar job with another company!
What? Wait?! He did WHAT? Why?
Because, Ashworth explains, “money stops mattering once you have enough to not worry about it. And I have [had] the good sense to give people things more valuable than money” — something backed up by Dan Pink’s talk to the RSA and recent research in behavioural economists:
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