Facing declining membership and significant elimination of funding from government, one Nova Scotia group currently based with an office in Truro has even given me a direct question to answer. "We are interested in redefining office," their leaders have stated. "How would you redefine our office?"
As someone who works full-time, yet doesn't have an office, and hasn't had one now for over a decade, I find this question quite interesting! My first reaction is, "Why do you think you need an office?" You see, I don't have an "office" in the traditional sense, but I do work full-time for a corporation out of my home.
Perhaps we could start with a list of tasks that typically happen inside the office, all of which I assert can be done from home instead?
- Respond to questions from members, using phone or email
- Pay bills, write receipts, accounting records
- Ordering stuff, receiving stuff, arranging accommodations
- Advertising or otherwise telling people about our organization
- Running computer hardware and software to do business over the internet
- Making sure people are there and have what they need to do the organization's work (mostly volunteers)
- Administrative stuff like photocopying, printing
Maybe ask yourself, is there anything you do in your current office that you could not do from a home instead?
In my own work, the only time this seems to happen is when a face-to-face conference is deemed necessary. For me, this has happened less than once a year, in the last decade! Normally, I do my work using a computer with internet service and Skype. I don't even use a traditional phone for my work anymore, though I know there are "virtual office" services available so you can still have a physical address and phone number if you need it separate from your home.
As for conference space, I think that even if you need to do face-to-face meetings more often, there are alternatives to have a full-time space. As an example, maybe you could arrange to host meetings in a community room in a library or community hall, or perhaps your community has a hub space where different businesses will split costs to have access to a meeting room for occasional use?
Personally, I like the small tax break that I get by working from home. Say you have 10 rooms in your home, and you use a room for business purposes... In Canada, you can claim 10% of your power bill to reduce the income tax you pay. You can also claim what you pay for your home-based in internet service, because you're using that for business purposes. There are other claims that can be made as well, depending on your circumstances. Also, I love that I don't pay for gas in my car every day, here is less wear and tear on my vehicle, and I don't waste an hour or more driving to/from work every day either - more "me" time when work hours are done!
There are a few challenges to working from home as well, of course. It was a bit tough at first, not seeing people all the time "in an office". What I learned to do though was to use tools like Facebook (sparingly) to replace the social trips to the "water cooler". Also, I found I needed to have someone else watching my kids, so I could close myself in a room to work quietly. Those are really small challenges though, when I consider the benefit I've had where I've been there for the brief moments when my kids really seemed to need their Mom.
Does anyone else out there have ideas about how to "redefine office"? I bet I'm forgetting some good points... Please "comment" to add to this, as I'm sure the group asking me for input would like to know!
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