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Should Your Business Bother With An Office?
(This is a contributed post)
When we talk about businesses, we tend to imagine a company with a nice big office. All the employees are neatly arranged in desks, and they all work in the same place every day.
However, the business world doesn’t look like this anymore. More and more companies are popping up without a fixed abode. Instead, they choose to work remotely, with all employees working from home.
This begs the question – should your business bother with an office? To answer this, we must look at the key talking points…
Collaboration
Being in a room with your entire team is seen as the key advantage of an office. You can easily collaborate on all your projects without wasting any time.
Obviously, there are two counterpoints here in favour of not having an office. For one, if you don’t have a team to work with, or you outsource most of your work, then you don’t care for this benefit.
Secondly, you can collaborate using the cloud. As long as your team works to the same schedule, then you can interact with the same document from different places all as one. You can also instant message or video call your team, and you can chat straight away. It might not be 100% perfect, but it still works very well.
Reputation
The second reason most people want an office is down to the reputation that comes with one. If your business is seen in a busy business district in a big city, then you instantly gain a rep boost. There’s no denying that a company with an office in a property business location looks more respectable than one with a residential address.
However, there’s a simple way around this. You can get a virtual address through a virtual office. All of a sudden, you gain the same reputation as that other company. But, the difference is that you paid for a cheap virtual office and they’re paying rent every month. It’s far more cost-effective to go down the virtual route.
So, if you’re only interested for the sake of your reputation, then you’re probably better off going virtual instead.
Productivity
Lots of individuals work best when they’re in an office environment. They struggle to work from home as there are too many distractions, and it’s not a professional setting. With an office, they associate this place with work. So, it’s much easier to get in the zone.
On the other hand, some people work best at home! The office might be too distracting for them, and they prefer having the freedom of their own work set up. Plus, they can work from anywhere they want if they don’t have to go into an office. This may even mean that some employees pay to use collaborative workspaces that are basically like shared offices.
Either way, if you want an office to improve productivity, then it might not have the effect you hope for.
All in all, an office is no longer essential for modern businesses. Consider if you can do all of your work and run a business without renting an office. If you can, and your employees are happy to work remotely, then there’s no reason to stop working from home. It saves a lot of money, and there aren’t many issues that you can’t find solutions for!
