Does it ever strike you as odd that we all battle the traffic, the weather, the cost of parking/commuting everyday at the same time – and for what? to make it into a cubicle/highrise/60s cement block.

I’ve always been keen to question the norm when it comes to business – not just for the sake of it, but because what seems to be standard practice is often proven to be built on weak foundations, or at the very least an out-dated concept.


Flexible working

It all started a few years back we introduced flexible working hours for our team. Nothing new there, except there was only a handful of us at the time and we’re a service based company. Eyebrows were raised by a number of people – how could we possibly deliver a good service to our clients if we weren’t in by 8.30 and there chained to our desks until at least 6.30pm?

The answer was simple. We trusted our staff to take responsibility for dealing with the needs of their clients in a timely manner. And as a team, we ensured that the phones were always manned within ‘normal’ working hours by taking it in turns.

The course wasn’t entirely smooth running – trying new things will always require a few tweaks, but the benefits to our staff and therefore our clients were evident. Happier staff and more creative thinking. As a creative company we don’t always have our best thoughts between 9 and 5.30, some of us are more creative early in the morning or late at night. Some of us have children and want to be there for them when they get home, or in the morning, others just like a lie in!

Challenging the office set up

The change in working hours also had a knock on effect to our office. It’s often been very empty, with two or three people rattling around in a space that could hold 20. A few months ago when we were reviewing the business, one of the team drew our attention to the space we had and how it wasn’t being used. It made us review the current situation – the whole relationship with our business and the office.

We questioned everything, from the management information system, to the time spent ordering toilet rolls (a bugbear within the company!), to the way we work and interact with each other and our clients.

We found 5 main things that was wrong with the current office set up:

1. We pay for space we don’t use: More space encourages the storing of files that aren’t ever really needed, it costs more on rates, bills and upkeep. Our staff are spread across locations and work flexible hours but for most of the time we use about a fifth of the office.
2. Our telecommunications were costing a bomb: BT’s charges for standard line rentals and broadband were astronomical for a company our size. Yet sometimes we needed the four phone lines, 1 fax line, 1 alarm line, two broadband connections. We were paying through the nose for something that we utilised fully for about two days a month.
3. Caught up in upkeep of the office: With standard office leasing agreements we are responsible for the day-to-day running of the office. That may sound like whinging, but actually, any time spent on menial things (air con, broken door handles, leaking taps, parking – the list goes on) takes you away from your core business – the stuff that makes you money, keeps you profitable.
4. Staff don’t always want to be in an office environment: Let’s face it – 60s cement blocks aren’t the most inspiring, corporate cubicles even less so! We’re not Google, unfortunately we don’t have money to spend on making our environment any more exciting than nice desks and comfortable chairs, so the same walls get a little uninspiring. Even for creatives.
5. The best people don’t always live on your doorstep: Being based in one place and requiring all the team to be in that one place limits the staff that you can hire. Swindon is great for business, but not all the top people live in Swindon (yet).

Rethinking the office model

Knowing now that we’ve blindly been walking through the office mire we’ve started to challenge the business model.  We’ve addressed all the issues and we’re making some bold moves. This is what we’ve done to overcome the issues:

Problem: Paying for space we don’t use.
Solution: We’ve down-sized the space to the barest minimum, we’ve recycled so much of our stuff and mulched files that are over two years old. We’re ebaying stuff that still has use and giving to charity the things that can’t be sold. We’ve had to be harsh with ourselves but keeping things for the day they may come in handy again just costs money and 99% of the time won’t get re-used.

We’ve found an office that’s a flexible space (month by month lease), we can have more space if we need it (or less if needs be). It’s got a meeting room that we can hire if we need to (but again, we’re only paying for it when we need it).

Problem: telecoms costing a bomb
Solution: The offices we’ve found has a leased line (a dedicated broadband connection direct to the office) – it gives us upload speeds of 30Mb about 30 times that of the average connection. This means that we can now utilise that connection for voice over internet telecoms (VOIP), so phone calls cost almost nothing. The phone system that comes with the office enables us to programme it over the internet, so if anyone is stuck at home (remember the snow?) they can connect online and forward their calls to their mobiles.

The fax line has also gone online – we get about 4 faxes a month, for which we are paying the line rental, plus the consumables and the cost of the electricity. We’ve found an online solution that sends faxes directly to us as emails – and we can send them from our computers too. The offices are already alarmed and patrolled so now we don’t need the telephone line for monitoring the alarm either.

Problem: Caught up in the upkeep of the office
Solution: The office we’ve picked comes fully managed. The telecoms and IT are all integrated, the shared spaces are all looked after. Toilet roll is no longer our problem! If we have an issues with the phones, the internet, the alarm – it’s all covered. No more waiting in line for BT to answer their customer service line (“press one for mind-numbing pain…”). Parking comes with the office.

Problem: 60s office blocks are uninspiring
Solution: Now we start to get a bit more radical, we’ve set up things so our staff are free to work where they like. If they don’t want to, they don’t have to come into the office everyday. If they feel more creative in a Café, or their lounge or in the local library, they are welcome to work there. The same rules apply as they do for the flexible working – the phones have to be manned and our staff have to be responsible for their clients.

Technology has moved on since we started out, so much of our work is done online, new tools are available allowing us to free ourselves from the confines of the 60s cement block. We found a new online management system that allows us to manage our jobs, our estimates and invoicing, we use an online scheduling system to book in jobs and plan our workload and we’re utilising skype for general chatter and banter.

Problem: Not all the best people live just around the corner
Solution: By taking a lot of our system online we’ve opened up the opportunity to take staff on that aren’t just based within Swindon. We’ve opened up the opportunity to get the best people for a job rather than the best person locally.

In summary

It’s all radical thinking, but we honestly believe that we have to always question standard practice in order to stay lean and ahead of the game. The changes that we’re implementing not only seem to make good business sense they make good financial sense – we’ll be cutting our overheads by a third!

We’re expecting teething problems, I’ll update the blog with how we’re getting on, I’m sure we’ll find that we need to change a few things along the way but those tweaks won’t frighten our focus away from the bigger picture – to create an innovative business that is right for our clients and our staff. I don’t believe that investing in your staff is just about training, it’s about thinking about the way work interacts with life. If you get the balance right, you get a better result all round. Happy clients, happy staff and a profitable business.

We’ll let you know.


Useful reading:

If you’re thinking of doing some radical changes to the office – I’d suggest some of the following as a starting point:

• There’s a great post about ‘distributed offices’ (the name for companies that are spread in different locations) from Toni.org
• There’s information about Pure Offices – a business that seems to be going from strength to strength
• Need an online fax machine with a local number? Try My Fax
• Also information on the management system that we’ve implemented – WorkflowMax –  they’re a great team of people and the service really suits our working practices. There are others from BaseCamp and Get Harvest to name a couple but do a search online and you’ll find something that suits your business.