Why do we need an office???

We had just come out of the lockdown in April 2021, and on review of our overheads, our city office was our highest expense. In doing some reading into business overheads, this is similar for most consultancies. Our office expense was currently sitting at about 10% of our revenue forecast for the year.

Naturally, we had moved to be part-time in the city and part-time WFH after Covid 2020/21, so we were spending all this money on an office that was full twice a week. Not a great use of our cash!

There is a stigma that you aren’t a real business until you have an office. This deeply resonated with us. We were trying to find an office solution because that's what you do - not because that's what we needed. 

there is a stigma that you aren’t a real business until you have an office

At our monthly meeting, the idea of ditching the office permanently was discussed with the team. We said lets trial WHF from the fortnight, and see if we can survive without one. When asked what some of the challenges we may face as a result of AES's most recent hair-brain scheme, the team raised the following concerns:

• not everyone has a separate home office / appropriate set-up commensurate for WFH
• separation from friends in the city and a reduction of social interactions

So these were things we were going to need to manage. Although there was a general unsure vibe, the team said they were willing to give it a crack. Two weeks in, at our fortnightly health check (fortnightly check-in [17/05/2021]) we requested feedback on the following areas and the answers were interesting.

Why did you use the office over the fortnight?

There was one reason. 

1. convenience: where someone had a regular client meeting they came in for the day and hung around in the office or if someone had an appointment in the city, they would schedule their work time around the appointment

What challenges did you face WFH?

There were four main answers

1. distractions - people with kids, and families indicated that these distractions took away from a general focus allowing for efficient work time
2. team engagement - the ability to bounce ideas off each other without formally organising a meeting was another challenge highlighted with the past experience that it was easier to chat/get advice in the office.
3. direction - with business processes only being partially complete, expecting everyone to autonomously complete tasks with half-finished processes was difficult without multiple online engagements
4. IT problems were another thing that popped up. Specifically internet access and computer hardware (docking stations etc)

 What benefits do you see this has?

There were two main answers

1. productivity - some (not all) of the team indicated they were more productive at home 
2. more time at home - reduced travel time coupled with strict adherence to work hours (something we are still working on!!) meant the team was able to have more time given reduced travel 

Having shared our vision of being a virtual consultancy by end of 2021, our plans for the next 6 months are:

1. consolidate the virtual consultancy vision 
2. identify a WFH expectation/comms protocol and expectations
3. work up IT support (not leave it to the computer illiterate Director!)
4. complete work instructions and business processes
5. work out how to encourage team engagement outside of the office environment 

We will continue to share our progress, team feedback, and solutions as we guide AES on the path to becoming a virtual consultancy.