Companies that Don't Cut Real Estate are Committing Strategic Suicide
Mar 12, 2020
$22,000 / year / person
The saving companies make by adopting remote working full-time.
$11,000 / year / person
The saving companies will make by adopting remote working 2 to 3 days per week.
Remote workers are 15% more productive
The secondary benefit is in productivity. Remote workers are 15% more productive than office workers doing the same thing. The isolation to do deep focussed work at home away from the constant disruption of the office is a superpower for companies. Over the course of a year that 15% increase in productivity translates to 40 extra days work a year per worker.
The Office is a competitive disadvantage
They are more expensive and lead to your company being less productive. The third part is that they prevent you hiring the most talented people. A physical location means you can only hire the best person you can afford within a 30-mile radius of it. This disqualifies you from 99.9% of the world's talent. Remote first companies hire the best person globally.
Retain and attract better people
Most things don't come with a first-mover advantage. Remote working does. Companies that move first will be able to attract the most talented people from their fiercest competitors. Companies who go remote first will stop their fiercest competitors stealing their best people. Going remote first lets you keep and raise the talent level in your organization.
Companies who adopted technology 20 years ago replaced every company that didn't.
Companies that adopt remote working today will replace every company that doesn't.
Only monopolies can afford to stay in the Office
Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple are the only companies that can afford to remain office-first. Every other business globally that stays in the office full-time will be replaced by a remote-first competitor who does the same thing.
Office-first companies won't be competitive rapidly. Going remote is the smartest management strategy any company can deploy to avoid this coming disruption.
Commercial real estate cut by 50%
Companies are moving quickly to cut their office footprint by at least 50% saving $10M per 1,000 workers who operate from home half the week or $20m per 1,000 who do so full-time.
COVID-19 has given these companies comfort that remote work works and that their workers are able to operate efficiently in this mode of operation.
Company board will move quickly to demand their companies develop a remote work capacity immediately with a view to any situation like this happening again.
What are the options?
Companies are weighing up two options: co-working spaces or go remote.
Co-working is easy to jump to, you sign a short term lease with a provider and everything scales up easily. It scales up as you need it and that hassle is handled by the provider.
The problem with co-working spaces is that they are turning out to be more distracting and less productive than regular office. They also require the same commute an office does.
The problem with going remote is that there has been no easy way to do it.
Develop a Remote Strategy Instantly
We built Firstbase to solve this problem. Getting remote workers set up at home comes with a high upfront cost, it's time-consuming organizing and managing equipment while it's deployed, and you have problems delivering it to workers, getting it back when they leave or upgrading it when that time comes.
Firstbase is an all-in-one platform that lets companies supply and manage all the physical equipment remote workers need to do great work at home. We take handle everything on the companies behalf as a monthly subscription per worker, letting a company set everything up in under an hour.
