Do you even need an office to get your work done?
We can use conference calls to keep in touch with the boss and our teammates.
We can use webinars or web conferences to present new products, new technologies and new ideas.
We have the technology.
We can work from anywhere … anywhere that isn’t the desk, chair and four walls the company provides.
We can work from home.
The coffee shop.
The hotel.
The airport.
Wherever.
The wherever, whenever, however workspace is about to take hold.
“In our company, we have people working anywhere they live. All they need is a reliable broadband connection,” says Andy Abramson, CEO of communications consulting firm Comunicano Inc., told Inc.com.
Where do you work?
Jason Fried, co-founder of Chicago-based software firm 37signals, says most work doesn’t get done at the office.
We’ve written about Jason before. He’s a champion of remote work and empowers telecommuters by encouraging businesses to embrace the workplace practice.
In a recent Ted Talk, he says businesses spend too much money on offices and make people go there … to experience a series of work moments, but never get anything worthwhile accomplished.
While many managers and supervisors worry about the distractions employees will face when they work at home, Fried asserts those workers face more and more disruptive interruptions at the office.
And no, says Fried, it isn’t the internet, Facebook and Twitter.
It’s managers and meetings.
“Meetings aren’t work,” he says. “Meetings are a place to talk about what you’re going to do later.”
Instead, he says, we’re more productive outside the office walls.
It’s about time
When he asks workers where or when they are most productive, they say a place outside the office, a moving object like a plane or a train (the commute!) or outside the 9-to-5 time paradigm.
A lot of people say ‘it doesn’t matter where I am as long as its really early in the morning or really late night or on the weekends.’ You almost never hear people say, ‘At the office.’
The solution, says Fried, is to allow employees to work wherever and whenever they can to accomplish their tasks … and meet each company’s business goals.
Even if you send your employees home to work for a day or two a week, you might see a rise in productivity and quality of work.
