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Escape the office: businesses without premises

He has the best office in the worldShot of a young man using a laptop while camping on a remote inlet in Tasmania
Without an office, commutes are eliminated, workforce diversified and funds can be redirected towards employee wellbeing and rewards. Photograph: pixdeluxe/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Once upon a time, the office was where employees went to find the tools and equipment to do their work in their own allotted workspace. But as the nature of work has changed, along with the casualisation of the workforce, the role of the office too has shifted.

For many businesses nowadays, the main justification for having an office is to collaborate and create a feeling of community. But with myriad remote-working tools to bring teams together, such as Slack, Trello and Asana; the rising cost of commercial rents, particularly in cities such as London; and the rise of the co-working sector and even “desk surfing”, do small businesses even need to graduate from the spare bedrooms, studies and converted sheds in which they were founded?

An office is a huge expense for a business and not having one saves a lot of rent – money that could go instead towards talent and technology. Milk Beauty, which provides corporate beauty services, reduced its non-people costs by 30% when it chose not to renew the lease on its office in east London last year. “We decided to trial not having an office and instead work at client locations and at home,” says Lucy Patterson, Milk’s managing director and co-founder. The trial’s success meant the business has never looked back. “Our virtual setup has contributed significantly to our cash generation and profitability,” Patterson says.

The savings from not having an office mean you can support the workforce in other ways. In 2015 social media scheduling startup Buffer ditched its San Francisco office; the platform was spending more on its office than on health insurance, advertising or marketing, and with team members all over the world it didn’t make sense to retain it.

We use the money saved to pay for the internet for our team and take everyone on a retreat once a year

The team now works from home, coffee shops and co-working spaces. “Had we kept our office, at roughly $13,000 for 20 sq ft per employee, we’d be spending nearly $1m per year,” says Hailley Griffis, a company spokesperson. “Instead we can use that money to pay for the internet for our team and take everyone on a retreat once a year, which still costs less than $400,000.”

Being free of the office also means no more daily travel to it. “Almost no commuting means we can work an extra couple of hours each day, and rarely have to travel during the rush hour,” says Morag Ekanger, co-founder and director of food business Bad Brownie. The company has always been based at home, but it recently acquired a production kitchen and built a small office in the mezzanine for its small team. “It never entered our heads to have an office until we started to hire people other than chefs, and even then it was a couple of desks in the corner of the kitchen until last year.”

Eliminating the need to commute can also help SMEs to diversify their teams. “Not being tied to one location has allowed us to build our remote working support team from across the UK,” says Patterson. “Our recruitment talent pool grew infinitely overnight when we no longer expected team members to commute to us.”

Buffer is similarly proud. “People who are aligned with our vision and mission live all over the world, and we wouldn’t want to limit the people who can join Buffer based on location,” says Griffis.

What’s more, when all employees are made to work under the same conditions, no one feels disadvantaged or left out. “Our CEO Joel Gascoigne was advised to either be fully remote or work entirely in an office so no one felt disadvantaged – either because remote workers got more flexibility, or because office workers got more perks,” Griffis says. “We decided to go fully remote because it allows for greater flexibility.”

This flexibility is a huge, obvious boon for SMEs. “Sometimes you work best when the lines between life and work are a little hazy and you can dip in an out of both,” Ekanger concurs. “A seven-day week is the reality of a business owner and we rarely completely switch off. Being able to send a few emails on the weekend or answer calls is simple as I have everything at home with me.”

Having the flexibility to use co-working spaces, in particular, can inspire new ideas and help create new connections. “If businesses work in a coffee shop or bedroom, they lose out on the entrepreneurial community that has become increasingly important to help startups thrive in the earlier stages,” says Tushar Agarwal, co-founder and CEO of Hubble, which helps businesses find the perfect workspace. “Most shared workspaces have ready-made communities, networking events, expert talks and a shared amenity space to forge useful connections, with set-up utilities ready to plug and play.”

There are downsides to being office-free, however: a lack of privacy being a big one, although most co-working spaces provide meeting rooms and private booths. “Some meetings just need to be done in person, and sensitive conversations do need to happen in private,” says Ekanger. “We used to have to arrange most calls or employee catch-ups from our van, as it was the only private space we could find. We still do sometimes.”

It’s also harder to bring employees together when they’re spread out across different time zones. “It means not everyone can be online at the same time to brainstorm. Instead we try and focus on asynchronous work that doesn’t require everyone to be online at once,” says Griffis. “That might mean leaving detailed notes about what we’re working on for teammates who aren’t online, and avoiding meetings if not everyone can be there.”

While most of these pitfalls can be overcome by setting a clear standard for communication and keeping everyone up-to-date – using cloud-based drives, for instance – meeting as a team face-to-face is irreplaceable, especially in the early stages. “We bring the whole team together once a year in a different city so teams can collaborate and brainstorm, and people can meet and improve their working relationships,” Griffis says.

Research shows that in-person connection and the physical touch, such as handshakes, breeds empathy and trust, so while working remotely may be more productive, it’s worth reviving your IRL relationships every so often.

Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Kia Fleet, which also supports the Guardian Small Business Network Accessing Expertise hub.