By Stuart Falconer
How would you like to run a company where there is no central office? All off our staff work from home?
Wow! I left the interview with two opposite reactions. First, I love working from home so for me this seemed like a perfect fit. However, I also knew that as General Manager, not having any ability to be in the office, to meet the staff, to run things by my management team on a whiteboard, to jump into different staff meetings just to see what was going on increased my fear factor enormously. How do you run a ship without a ship?
But I loved the principles the company stood for and the space they were in so I jumped into the deep end and have never looked back.
I can tell people that we do quarterly client satisfaction surveys and always get scores greater than 90%, that we do bi-annual staff satisfaction surveys again with results greater than 90%, we have incredibly low turnover, we have a 90% success rate on our projects in terms of on time delivery and on budget delivery (and we close over 200 projects a quarter) and we have double digit annual growth and EBITDA. Yet, I still get asked all the time…”So what about the working from home thing, does it work?”.
There is simply no way to fully exclaim how well it works. Everyone in my company knows the answer to the question. We all laugh about the “doubts”. We all laugh because with every new hire we have to talk them through the fact that yes this is a home office job because every single person fears it in some way, and yet we know that after 6 months every single hire is a complete convert and religiously realizes that life is better, they work harder than ever, work is way more fulfilling, they can focus on what matters, they totally enjoy a work environment social life and their home life is way more fulfilled also.
Of course the savings are substantial. No office, no rent, no heat, no supplies, no office manager all add up to hundreds of thousands in savings. But if the business statistical results on client sat, employee sat and EBITDA do not convince, then all I can do is offer a few vignettes.
Meetings are an obvious place to start. In the office, if you are bored you head to the next meeting a couple minutes early, if busy you head in a few minutes late. Maybe stop for coffee on the way. Sit down in the meeting room, a few people trickle in, start a few jokes or a story, a few more people join, the story continues, finally everyone arrives 5-10 minutes after the hour, the jokes get finished, a joke gets made about getting started and the meeting gets going. Usually the meeting will go until the scheduled end time at least, and may extend with everyone, some or a few for longer. The next team builds up outside the meeting room until finally you are kicked out.
Remote meetings are so very, very different. Everyone tends to dial in right on the minute. If anyone is late it seems like hours until they arrive. The first two on the phone might make a joke, but when the next person joins the call the jokes seem to die out and really it is almost dead air until everyone arrives – and guess what you are doing while you wait? Work! Again, if it takes more than 4 minutes before everyone is there it is soooo painful that the culture automatically becomes “don’t be late…it just sucks too much”. This is an automatic result. This is not caused by a set of “meeting rules” which dictate “we start after 5 minutes etc., etc., etc…if you have this set of rules, then you do not have on time meetings. We don’t need the rules because all meetings start on time and are focused. It’s simply how remote meetings work.
Then the topics are totally focused. People are clear and crisp and fact oriented. The topics are covered, action items assigned and the call ends. We are not weird about it, again it is just how remote conferences go. And it’s fulfilling. You jump on calls, you get what you need and you keep rolling seconds later. You are so hyper effective at getting things done because it’s all in front of you. I completely remember in the office people coming in and talking to me and me saying, “OK, no problem, just make sure you send me an email on that so I can deal with it”.
One fear that management has is “slacking”. Are people slacking? I think it is possible if you have a mixed environment to have slackers…maybe someone can hide at home a little bit but a lot of hiding happens in the office too. People can attend endless meetings or maybe move between house and office to create the sense of performance. However, when everyone works at home, it is impossible to hide. Your job is so clearly connected to other people and the workflow is so apparent that all of your effort or lack thereof is very apparent. When you are driving at full speed and you know what you need from others, there is little room for them to hide.
The intensity of the work day is very different. Sometimes I sit down and drive non-stop for 6 hours. That is a full hard press of 6 hours of output before even looking up. I get so much done in that time frame that I cannot even compare it to a “regular work day”. But then, 1 minute after going downstairs for lunch, I will write my wife a bragging email saying that “life is good” because it feels like I am on a day off drinking a latte from my own espresso machine eating a sandwich from my fridge. If I worked that hard at the office I would come home bagged. Now I feel like I am on holiday that day because my lunch is so great and then 30 minutes later I am back at work but that’s OK, I like what I do and it’s what I want to do today anyway.
Another fear is the social aspect. And again, it is only a fear. All of our staff actually feel like they have incredibly strong connections at the office. In fact, we have incredibly strong connections at the office and with our clients. We all feel like we are part of a big family. We get together once a year for a 3 day party/staff event and it is far more emotional than any staff celebration I have ever seen. It is more like a long lost family reunion then an office party. We feel very connected with each other. We get to work together on meaningful issues all the time. We talk on the phone, have one on one’s, challenge each other and truly develop real relationships. Somehow we all respect each other more. Being able to focus on results has made us a very strong team.
Life choices are increased. Our staff work all over (you actually have staff ALL over Canada) Canada, in small towns, in Northern Communities and in big cities. Our staff can choose their location and we can choose from the best candidates all over the map. If your spouse needs to move, you don’t lose your job, you can move with them. This is just the beginning. Every one of our staff can tell a personal story about how work from home has helped them. The time, money and stress saved from commuting is invaluable.
I think it is a lot like life used to be. You would work at home on the farm or in the bakery connected to your house. You worked hard and your life was driven by success, by building a better farm or getting up at 3AM to bake bread, but your life was not torn apart. You were still at home, you ate lunch at the family table and you felt good about yourself. Farmers do not need to be told to be in the field every day. The results are so connected to the performance that people self-select to outperform.
And yet, no matter how well we perform, our EBITDA, our growth rate, our client satisfaction rates and so forth we still get challenged with people who think there has to be a downside, you just can’t run a business this way. It’s hard to know what to say. We are so converted that it is almost religious for us. We simply know how hard we work and how high performance our staff has become.
This article is not about the tools we use but if you have clear goals, planned workflow, performance and work ticket tracking and lots of satisfaction measurements in place there is no doubt about performance but you will never believe how high your staff satisfaction can be until you disband the office. We are certainly not looking at real estate any time soon.
About the Author
Stuart is a result-driven Senior Executive with a proven record of moving technology companies to new levels of performance and effectiveness. He is highly effective in identifying an organization’s core weaknesses and articulating a vision to drive a successful turnaround. As a driven, visionary entrepreneurial leader, Stuart has the ability to motivate, coach, lead, and energize employees at all levels. He has a wide range of local and international experience in team building, change management, negotiation, conflict resolution, coaching, and business turnaround. Stuart has a passion for fun, excitement, and creativity. Visit Stuart’s Linkedin Profile for more information.
About StarDyne Technologies Inc.
Founded in 2001, StarDyne Technologies Inc. (StarDyne) makes strategic investments in businesses providing software and related solutions to the public sector including local government and education.
http://www.stardynetech.com
About SRB Education Solutions Inc
SRB Education Solutions empowers school districts in managing education delivery and student success. As K-12 education administration software and services leaders, we provide products of choice in Finance, Human Resources, Payroll, Student Information Management and Business Intelligence. Through strategic acquisitions, SRB now offers GradeBook, Parent Portal & Library Management solutions. http://www.SRBEducationSolutions.com