There are some great businesses with no office, or with a semi-distributed working model.
I’ve been having many conversations about this, like all of us I guess, and, maybe this is one of the silver linings from this whole, horrible situation.
It always takes a while for social change, but some people have been working this way for a while. And working well.
It’s often very difficult for large businesses to change their systems to allow people to work remotely, large ships are slow to turn around, and many are struggling just to create user logins, so here is your chance to grab some market share.
Think of all the extra time saved not having to commute, people can live in more affordable locations, they can merge it with child care, have a happy dog. Have happier children.
I’ve heard people say that sales staff are social animals and need to be together. My experience, for what it’s worth, is the best sales people are social with clients, not just co-workers. When all this is over, and we are allowed to go to the pub again, let’s hope the clients get a beer too.
Remember this all started when coal was sold as a way of employing people in the city, at a lower cost than rural businesses using, free, waterwheels – but rural workers had the option to grow their own food and, therefore, cost more to employ. Since then, most people had to be where the machines were, the machines now, for most of us, are in our laps and pockets. Now rural workers can live better for less (maybe not Byron).
Obviously you have to make sure that people don’t feel isolated but lots of us are learning how to do that right now. To be honest I feel more connected, people seem to be more open to change, to do things better. to stop putting up with sub-optimal situations and suppliers, and that’s my major source of hope.
We could all do with some.
Photo by Johnson Wang on Unsplash