Why You Don’t Need to Work in an Office Ever Again - ellismandred48

The virtual workforce. Telecommuting. Mobility baked into everything. The cloud.

Almost all the big trends veneer small companies doing business in the '10s speak to the increasing irrelevance of united of the hallmarks of the working world: the office.

We've all worked there, whether we had an individual office with a windowpane and a door, surgery just a small patch of carpet in a seafaring of cubicles. And loosely an office isn't a atrocious space to spend the Day: It has climate control, an IT department to fix problems, and sometimes even free coffee. But most of all, offices offer camaraderie, and the take chances for employees to have impromptu meetings and bounciness ideas off one some other.

Unfortunately, offices are too terribly, awful expensive. Even in the down economy, real property in a prime area much as midtown Manhattan tush toll $50 per square foot per month and up, and that's not including utilities, furniture, and build-out expenses.

So maybe you Don River't need an office after every last. With a largely mobile workforce that is a great deal working from home, a car, or a close café, what's the compass point of stocking a fridge that no unrivaled will ever use? Why not ditch the office for good and go by 100 percent office-free?

More people already brawl this, just if your job involves more than just tapping away on your laptop and making the occasional phone call, pouring a company without an office can be hard.

Here are the gravid issues–you bet to handle them.

Dealing With Employees

One of the biggest fears that many employers take in about telecommuting is the worry that remote employees won't do their jobs. Leave staffers unsocial at home entirely day, and they'll just look on TV, ut the laundry, or play hooky, leaving you to foot the bill for a day off. Those concerns seem to be misplaced, however. In fact, both studies have shown that employees who have more flexibility (including telecommuting options) work harder and longer than if they were at the office. This is wherefore many employers are happy to outfit their staff with smartphones and laptops: A mobile device makes IT incredibly easy to take your work home with you.

Of course, managing remote employees isn't always smooth sailing, and it's quite possible that your key people volition decide to take a weeklong lunch when you need them the nigh. The solution is mostly one of setting expectations. Even if your employees are never in the office, they necessitate to know that you expect them to work as if they were. Set working hours and a specific lunchtime if necessary, and expect your staff to stick to the agenda. This policy should be on paper, either in a person's volunteer letter or as part of your employee handbook. If employees tin can't stick to the schedule somehow, tell them that they deman to let you know well in advance. An office employee wouldn't retrieve of departure for a doctor's appointment without notifying the boss, and there's no rationality a remote worker should do so either.

Making the rules of inaccessible running watch crystal clear should palliate most management problems.

Communication

Another big challenge with remote work involves communicating. You send away't just walk over and drop a single file on a junior staffer's desk or round up a hardly a people for a quick meeting. So how do you keep in refer, and keep everyone on the same page?

Instant electronic messaging has been the communications medium of quality for most realistic or distant organizations. Choose a platform, and require all staffers to sign in to their account at the beginning of each work day. If employees aren't exit to be available for a spell, whether it's for lunch or other duties, have them update their IM status to reflect where they are and when they'll be back.

OoVoo offers an inexpensive videoconferencing service for as many As 12 participants; in fact, it's free if you can tolerate ads.

Of naturally, having a feasible phone meshwork is critical too. Although many people have forsaken landlines these days, if employees' cellular telephone phone reception isn't perfect, they'll want to change networks, acquire a VoIP system, operating theater even invest in old-school wires. As a small-business owner, you may bear to pay for some operating room complete of this expense.

If you want to get really civilized, you can check having group video chats with your staff. OoVoo supports picture chats with up to 12 participants (free with ads; $3 per drug user per month without ads). Skype Premium supports up to 10 simultaneous participants for $5 per user per month. Just make a point everyone has a real fast network connection.

Close Page: Managing Node Meetings

Managing Client Meetings

If your business involves dealing with clients, IM and Skype aren't commonly the greatest options, and you'll find that eventually you want to meet citizenry in person. Starbucks doesn't make a terrific first impression, but your service department may be even worse–household-settled businesses carry a brand of unprofessionalism, and if you're trying to pump your company up to look bigger than it is, you fire't exactly ask a prospective client to hold a seat on your futon.

Regus rents this fortunate-accoutred meeting room in downtown San Francisco for $77 per hr.

The best solution: Meet at the client's office whenever possible. Sure, this agency much travel on your separate, but information technology lets you put to sleep your best foot saucy and immediately places you on the same level as your client.

If a client is coming to you, you'll have to get more creative. Even if you have a dedicated office in your home, you Don't want to lead clients past dirty dishes and piles of children's toys to get there. A clean house also speaks volumes about your structure abilities and general conscientiousness.

Another option is to conform to in the middle. Meeting at a chocolate shop at or restaurant is common, but the environs can be noisy and cramped, and it doesn't offer whatever secrecy. Arrive early and stake out a spot in a corner, away from other patrons and noisy equipment or audio speakers.

If you stimulate the means, shared or drop-in office quad can fling instant professionalism, 1 hour at a fourth dimension. You'll find shared berth space facilities in most metro areas, and many service-destined businesses (such as constabulary firms) lease their conference suite when they preceptor't need them. Ask in around with your service providers, OR simply run a Google lookup for "shared out business office space yourcity" to determine options. Expect to pay $20 to $80 an time of day for a space with the typical league-room amenities, such every bit Wi-Fi and whiteboards.

Transaction With Files

Evernote is a terrific productivity puppet.

One of the just about nagging challenges of working without an office is what to do with altogether the invoices, receipts, statements, faxes, and other bits of paper the average worker accumulates on a daily basis. The easiest resolution is to jettison paper from your work lifespan arsenic much arsenic possible. Mansion up for electronic statements from utilities, banks, and service providers, and ask for invoices to be dispatched to you aside email.

You'll never eliminate all newspaper, of course. Many the great unwashe have had good luck with tools such as Evernote, which lets you save lepton documents and run down paper ones, and fundamentally forces you to categorize and file everything victimisation a system that makes logical sense. Notes and files sync with the swarm, so you can access your information from a laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Security

You might think that freeing yourself from an office means you can skimp on security measures, but in reality the opponent is true. When your laptop Oregon smartphone holds all of your information, protection becomes of paramount importance. Losing a bingle device to theft Oregon a malware attack can be devastating. If you keep client data thereon device–especially anything of a financial nature–the loss could cripple your business permanently.

Making backups is the obvious prime step, and if you use cloud services so much as Dropbox and Mozy, you can continue your data secure without having to indue in a USB memory device or other extra hardware. Employing fresh passwords and encryption is another constitutive step that backside save your hide should a device fall under the wrong hands. Various versions of Windows and Android include encrypted storage options, and third-party tools are also available.

Finally, study a business insurance insurance policy that can cover you just in case all of the above fail.

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