Architects working from home - How to's and benefits

We all had to adapt quickly and learned how to work from home, while dealing with the kids, other occupants in the house and a complete new lifestyle.  But what good things came out of working from home?  Should (at least some of us) continue to do it, purely because it is more beneficial for our businesses or the companies we work for?

We will take you through the benefits of working from home, so you can dissect it for yourself and see what will work best for you moving forward.

Some employers really regard 'working from home' as a negative concept, where it is really a great opportunity!

When you or your staff work more from home and less from the office you save on expenses like: Renting office space, consumables (like coffee and cleaning materials), data- and electrical costs, etc.The costs of having a full-time office pile up and create one large overhead cost.  If, however, employees are allowed to work off-site, at least sometimes, these costs come down.

Large corporates, world-wide, are now implementing the system where employees only go to the office 80% of the time (this was the trend even before the pandemic).  Of course the process is managed vigorously, tested continuously and adapted as required.  But it is cutting office overheads and increasing the bottom line.  Not only do you need less parking bays, staff recreational areas and ablutions, it also alleviates traffic, benefiting all; both employees and other road users.

No time is spent traveling, resulting in more effective, less irritated employees at the beginning of the day, when one is most effective.  A lot of positive energy is lost in traveling to the office.

The sooner individuals and companies can develop systems to effectively manage and evaluate off-site work the sooner they can start benefiting from it.

Other benefits of off-site work

• No ‘buffer-time’ between arriving at work and actually working effectively
• Because off-site work is evaluated more vigorously, employees deliver better work.
• Employees who manage it successfully take more responsibility for their work
• Work is often produced overnight
• Office overheads decrease
• No need to check up on employees, because one can’t - freeing up your time to do your own work ;-)
• Pay per deliverable – no payment for redundant work
• The system can easily be adapted

A word of caution:

Allowing employees to access the office networks and data from off-site locations could be a risk, due to the safety of the data.  This is not an unmanageable obstacle!  One must be aware of the risks and limitations and work accordingly.  It is definitely not a good enough reason not to test it.