Virtual Office Model Improves Productivity and Employee Satisfaction
AUSTIN, Texas, USA (August 13, 2010) — The virtual office model is becoming much more of a common practice. For tech companies, having a virtual workplace has a great many benefits for both the employer and the employee.
Development tools company REAL Software is headquartered in Austin, Texas, but has had employees working remotely since 1998, when they first began development on REAL Studio, their cross-platform rapid application development (RAD) environment. The original developer of REAL Studio (then REALbasic), Andrew Barry, was unable to relocate from Denver to Austin, so the only option was to work together from a distance. Since no significant issues arose while Barry had been working remotely, as more staff were hired it became easier to let them work from wherever they happened to be. Asking potential employees to move to Austin made the hiring process more difficult.
In the 1990s and early 2000’s working remotely was not practical, or typical, because the technology required to work away from the office was simply lacking. In 2008, however, the way people worked dramatically changed. As gas prices increased significantly, employers and employees alike began looking at alternative options to offer some relief. High speed internet, hand held devices, and other technologies enabled employers to more easily permit employees to work remotely. Today an increasing number of companies are going totally virtual or allowing employees to telecommute almost exclusively.
In early 2008, when Sun Microsystems had purchased MySQL, an article about the acquisition indicated that 75% of MySQL employees worked remotely. Sun also had a very open policy about employees working away from the office. IBM also has a large number of employees working remotely and, in fact, their website states that 40% of their employees work from home or a client site.
REAL Software had obtained a sizable office space with the intention of hiring people and moving them to Austin, but that rarely happened as most new hires worked remotely. With about half of the staff already working remotely, REAL Software Founder and CEO, Geoff Perlman, began to ponder the concept of adopting a virtual office model. A number of benefits immediately became apparent. First, there are substantial costs involved in renting an office space: rent, internet, electricity, phone system, insurance, cleaning, etc. Second, employees would not have to commute to work anymore. Traffic in Austin has been getting increasingly congested, so some employees were commuting an hour or more each day. Lastly, employees would gain more flexibility with their jobs, which ultimately makes them more productive.
“After weighing the pros and the cons of adopting a virtual office, I gathered the Austin-based staff in the conference room to discuss the idea. Most people had worked from home a handful of times per year, but there were definitely some skeptics,” commented Perlman. “Their main concerns were about not seeing each other every day and that they would easily get distracted with the things going on at their homes. We decided to try it for a month and see how it felt. This would allow us to see if the benefits were really there, what would have to change from how we worked together and find out what if anything, would be less effective.”
In order to accomplish moving to a virtual office, a number of changes had to occur. First, the servers that were in the Austin office would have to be relocated to a hosting center. Next, a new phone system that was VOIP-based would need to be implemented.
During the trial period, employees relied heavily on video and audio chatting to communicate, as well as instant messaging. Some staff would leave video chat open while they worked so it felt they were sharing an office with a coworker. Daily engineering meetings were held via Skype or iChat A/V. This turned out to be easier than getting all of the local engineers into the conference room, and then get the remote engineers on the phone. The Austin staff met for lunch once a week for some face to face time. Occasionally staff would meet at each other’s homes or public places for meetings.
“At the end of the month, we concluded that the trial was a success,” said Perlman. “Almost everyone preferred working from home to having to come into the office. Employees spent less time getting to work, they spent less money on gas, which is also better for the environment, they went out to lunch less often, saving money and eating healthier, and felt more flexibility in their schedules. They could throw on a load of laundry while they worked. For me, it meant I was home when my kids got home from school.”
“One unanticipated beneficial side effect we noted was that communication with remote staff improved," added Perlman. "When we were at the office a lot of communication would happen informally and that sometimes resulted in remote employees being unaware of ideas that were being discussed or decisions that had been made.”
With the adoption of a virtual office, REAL Software observed that their rhythms and procedures began to change such that everyone felt far more in the loop. Fortunately, REAL Software was able to find a tenant to take over the office space lease very quickly.
“While it still felt a bit strange to do it, we took the plunge - we subleased out our office space and had everyone work from home,” offered Perlman. “As it turned out, our timing could not have been better. The month our office was subleased, the recession turned from being something economists talked about to something the media was talking about.”
It has now been 24 months since REAL Software started the virtual office, and now working from home is just part of the daily routine. Video and audio conferencing services are used on a daily basis. The VOIP-based phone system allows tremendous flexibility. If employees are working away from their home office, phone calls can actually be answered from their laptops. REAL Software moved some of their servers to hosting centers. They use Google to host their company email and calendars, and use Google Docs for documents that need to be shared between several staff members.
“Productivity has increased and employees are happier,” added Perlman. Overall, it’s been a very positive move. It’s difficult to think about ever going back to driving into an office every day.”
About REAL Studio
REAL Studio, formerly REALbasic, is a full-featured cross-platform software development tool suited to creating a wide range of applications, from utilities to enterprise-class applications. REAL Studio Personal Edition for Windows, Linux or Mac is priced at $99 and is geared for hobbyists and students. REAL Studio Professional Edition, required for cross-platform compilation, is $299. REAL Studio Enterprise Edition, made for full-time developers, is priced at $995. All editions of REAL Studio are now available and can be downloaded directly from REAL Software at http://www.realsoftware.com/download.
About REAL Software
REAL Software provides REAL Studio, an object-oriented cross-platform software development tool, and REAL Server, a cross-platform database server, for developers who want to create and deliver software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. REAL Software was founded in 1996 and is based in Austin, Texas. For more information visit www.realsoftware.com or call 866.825.2114.