How do I convince my boss to get us an office and/or do more team building?

February 21, 2009 9:11 AM

How do I convince my boss to get us an office and/or do more team building?

I work for a consulting firm where most of us telecommute to work. Some people are on projects where they have to be in an office every day, but the majority of us work from home. I've been on a project for several months where I go to an office every day, and that project is scheduled to end soon - so it looks like I'll be working from home for the foreseeable future.

My problem is that I'm unsatisfied by this. It's been really nice to go into an office and interact with people; working from home can be very lonely, and after days or weeks of doing it, the walls can really close in on you. Furthermore, I see my coworkers once a month, and that's only if enough of us plan an event. Most of us don't see each other for months on end.

The firm has an office, but it's very far away. Some of us have been trying to convince management to open an office closer to home (in NYC, if it matters), but they haven't budged so far.

So my question to you guys is: how do I convince my bosses to open an office? Or, failing that, how do I get them to understand that intra-company morale is fairly low, and us seeing each other more often would be beneficial?

posted by gchucky to work & money (10 comments total)

In this economy, I have doubts that a company is going to rent expensive office space in NYC unless absolutely necessary. Usually they have telecommuting employees because it saves them the cost of a physical office. I think you'll have better success finding a way to make working at home more tolerable for yourself. Can you take your work/laptop to a bookstore or coffee shop or some place like that for a few hours per day so that you're around other people? Mr. Adams and I both work from home, but every morning he heads to the local Borders cafe with his laptop and works there for about three hours. He's befriended some of the regulars who do the same thing, and now several of them "hang out" after hours - get together once a month or so to watch a movie together or play board games, etc.
posted by Oriole Adams at 9:38 AM on February 21

Yeah, I've thought about doing that, and I probably should. My main concern is that I usually need to be on calls during the day, and I don't really want to be that guy talking on the phone while people are trying to read/work.

I should have mentioned this in my post, but the majority of us live in Brooklyn or Queens, and there's lots of cheap office space that's fairly accessible to all of us.
posted by gchucky at 9:45 AM on February 21

This is really interesting -- usually the question is "how can I convince my boss to let me telecommute?" not the other way around.

If you'd prefer to work in an office (which is a perfectly reasonable preference; telecommuting isn't for everyone), have you considered looking for work at a company that isn't based around telecommuting employees? That would likely be a lot easier than changing this company's whole strategy to suit your needs.

I really don't mean this to sound flippant, I'm perfectly serious. Many people view telecommuting as a benefit, not a burden, and it sounds like your company has pretty strongly committed to it. You really might be better off just working for a different company, instead of fighting the uphill (and probably hopeless) battle of trying to change this one. Plus you'd be making room at this company for someone who would actually prefer not to work in an office: everybody wins.
posted by ook at 9:54 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]

In any negotiation you always want to have positions that you can downgrade to; and an idea of what your opponent's (for lack of a better word) bare-minimum default will be. (In this case, for instance the not-terrible suggestion to work at Border's if you're just lonely). Have some counter arguments ready (it's not that I'm lonely, it's that we're more effective when team members have regular face time with each other, for instance).

In this case, your first fall-back might be to see if your firm can lease space at a business incubator or hotel on a regular basis (like 3rd Monday of the month, or every other Tuesday). This way it would be clearly work-based and not just a social get together. If you can do this for 6-months and demonstrate a clear productivity or bottom-line/profit increase your boss might relent on a more permanent solution.

Don't be defensive-- phrase all requests within the benefits to the business, and not as the downside to the current work situation for you personally (to which the obvious response is, well you can always find another job if you can't handle this one).

When negotiating, start with the ideal (rent us an office), and when they say no, move to position #2, then 3. Never let them stop at no. Have a minimum position from which you will not deviate. ( It can be pretty minimum.) You always want to make them concede something, even if it's just that they'll pay for the coffee you have to buy as cover when working out of Border's. You want him in the habit of telling you yes.
posted by nax at 9:57 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]

It just isn't the rent on the office space, it is the insurance and the other legal liabilities of having a physical office in NYC. If anything the trend is going the other way as companies look to save costs.

Instead you may wish to look into coworking or shared offices where you pay a fee to use a shared office with other telecommuters, freelancers, etc. They have the internet connection of course, but also printers, fax machines, wired telephones, will signs for FedEx, etc. Most will have conference rooms you can rent if you need to have meetings, etc. You can still work at home but also get out and it is better than the coffeehouse. If your boss is cool then you might be able to expense it or have them bill your company. More likely, you might have to pay for it yourself but you might think it is worth it if you're miserable at home.
posted by birdherder at 9:58 AM on February 21

Well, isn't it the purpose of telecommuting to a distant office to save money by not requiring daily drives to that office or maintaining a more expensive, local office? These are rough economic times and I can't imagine a company owner opening up an office simply to make you happier-especially when there is a multitude of unemployed people who would snatch up your telecommuting job in a minute if they could.

Until you can find a working environment that suits you better, be more creative to deal with your feelings of isolation. Telecommuting is all about connecting to the office from distant locations -it doesn't matter what your location is. Perhaps you can save money for a laptop with wi-fi (some jobs provide those for their telecommuters) and then move yourself to a coffee shop or library for a change of pace and for the opportunity to be around other people.

Though you obviously need is a job that fits you better, you may also want to reconsider the importance of your job in your overall life. For me, my friends and family, hobbies and interests are what keep me going. My job, while I want it to be fulfilling, is not my main source of social interaction and leisure, so I don't feel a need to get together socially with co-workers. If those things are important to you, then you need to find a job that has those qualities. This is much easier than trying to change company policies to suit your predilections.
posted by Piscean at 10:27 AM on February 21

I notice that you have reasons for not preferring some of the advice given. Have you asked your coworkers how they deal with the isolation? Can you arrange to work with them at your home or their home?
posted by Piscean at 10:32 AM on February 21

Instead of just going to a coffee shop by yourself, can you go to a coffee shop with other coworkers who are interested in the local office? Not every day, the one-day-a-week suggestions are good. Maybe get together from 11 to 2 so that calls can be handled before and after that time and so that it straddles lunch so its work and social related. After a few weeks, maybe the group of you can say "see how well this works?" and maybe upgrade to one of the shared offices.
posted by cCranium at 10:32 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

I think this post came off more as "I just want to hang out with people," and I should have articulated a bit better that there's a lot more merit to seeing my coworkers. For one, I have found that I work better if I can ask questions or work alongside someone. It's considerably harder debugging a function that someone else wrote if they're not next to me. Also, if I'm working on a team, it's a lot easier to feel like a member of that team if you can physically see your coworkers. Right now, it just feels like we're a bunch of people who happen to be working on a project. I think I want the freedom to choose whether or not I telecommute that day.

ook: I have thought about shifting jobs, but a lack of job security elsewhere makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Maybe once the economy improves...

nax: That's good advice. I'll probably do something like that. Thanks!

birdherder: I was thinking of trying to work that into it. There are plenty of shared offices in the area, and being able to expense that would be quite nice. I wonder if they could use that as a tax writeoff?

piscean: I have, and everyone sort of deals with it differently. Some people have class several days a week, so that provides a way for them to get out of the house. Admittedly I'm still sort of trying to find a more active social life here in the city, so I suppose once I get that worked out then this issue might resolve itself.
posted by gchucky at 12:08 PM on February 21

I'm going to go out on a limb and say, if your bosses run a telecommute business, odds are it's for one of a handful of reasons.

1. business model does not account for all the overhead of brick and mortar

2. your bosses *hate* commuting

3. your bosses *hate* dealing with people who try to make the business about "the team" and not about "the business"


In any of these cases, there is basically nothing you're going to be able to do about it. There are scads of crummy jobs where you have to go to weekly meetings where untalented hacks drone about the new ajax app they sort of wrote -- a go-getter like yourself should have no trouble getting a job at a place like that; the market is not as bad as people make it out to be, for programmers at least.
posted by judge.mentok.the.mindtaker at 12:39 PM on February 21