Home Office
Home OfficeThe term used to describe an office located in a home or private residence.
Interestingly so far those who think it is a GoodIdea are much more vocal (or numerous) than those who think it is not a GoodIdea. 20040327 1620Cdt
Other meanings
Used to describe the headquarters of a company or corporation.
Used in GreatBritain to describe a department dealing with law, public order, public safety, immigration, and so forth. -- http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk
From the standpoint of Computing Programming conducted in a HomeOffice by an individual in a ContractingAssignment?, a minimum hardware, software, and educational configuration should be present:
System A:
Connected Computers: At least two, connected via a hub or Wireless to the internet via Cable, DSL, or Fiber Optic Connection. The computers should include the latest Operating Systems with the second one of a prior version, whether Vista, Windows XP, Linux or other target system. (My Ultimate is to maintain one computer for each target system).
Printers: At least two: One High Capacity 20 to 60 ppm Laser Printer (B&W), and One Wireless Printer (InkJet? or Laser) capable of printing in color.
FaxMachine?: A single, dedicated FaxMachine? connected to its own phone number.
VoiceCapableModem? which can serve as a multi-person answering machine and for connections for data coming from non-internet sources.
A dedicated Voice Line, with wireless handset or personal communication set (headphones & mike) to allow communications hands-free.
Software: A complete suite of Office tools including word-processing, spreadsheets, databases, presentation-graphics and internet http and ftp able software browser/agents. Necessary Compilers, Interpreters and SoftwareProductionTools? for each of the languages or systems to be programmed.
Library: A suitable reference library containing appropriate information relative to the software and systems to be be programmed. The library should include hardcopy and softcopy resources, including such internet referencing and programming tools as are available at the time.
Education: Formal or Informal Education in the art and science of computing as well as math, business, accounting and science capabilities. A degree in ComputerScience might prove to be helpful, but not absolutely necessary. Essential knowledge and common sense, together with social skills which allow the working with those who have similar, or drastically different backgrounds or abilities. The realization that education is not a completed, but rather an ongoing concern.
HomeOffices are the wave of the future
FreeGasoline and for that matter FreeAnythings are only something Companies grant to encourage people to go to work in their "RealOffice" or keep from losing those who work there now.
In the future, more and more workers will either quit voluntarily to start up their own HomeOffices? and there do work for Companies who see it as to their own advantage rather than a grant or privilege, or be downsized when the work they are doing "at work" is Outsourced to people who will do it for less, and in a shorter period of time by doing it where they are or want to be.
Like it or not, HomeOffices are going to exist, work is going to be done there, and once people and companies get used to the realities of the many economic, social and environmental advantages that a HomeOffice can bring, including emulating many of the things presently done in a "Real Office", it is unlikely that work in the future will be tied down to a single location, not even to that of a HomeOffice. With the coming revolution in MobileComputing? and WirelessWideAreaNetworks?, work can be routed to you, where you are, you will not have to move from there.
Not only that, but you will be able to move and still maintain the workplace as being where you are. You will be able not only to communicate, submit work, seek clarifications, present arguments, carry on face-to-face interactions with co-workers, bosses, customers, and clients, but also to do so in a way which will make you and those (plural) for whom you work, the beneficiaries of efficiency, timeliness, and increased benefits over costs.
That being said, FreeGasoline, FreeFood?, FreeCoffee, and other FreeParking? will fail to stem the tide toward this new paradigm, and the Early Adopters who do "Get It" will outpace those who grudgingly and perhaps "to late" see value in "routing work to workers". -- DonaldNoyes
I've dealt with home offices from both the employee and employer side the equation. My first exposure to the idea that home offices were an inevitable future development in Clifford Simak's novel "City". For many years I believed in the logic behind them. But experience has led me to believe that (at least for the forseeable future) they will only be accepted for work that can be billed by measured production units. "Piece work" is the traditional term for this. Corporate culture relies heavily on seeing everyone else working (or appearing to work). It is impossible for most people not to suspect that someone who claims to be working at home is actually watching Oprah. Unless they produce something tangible and their pay is based on the volume of that production, I don't see how this idea will gain acceptance. -- EricHodges
What about today's technology prohibits employers from being able to "know" that one of their employees is working, whether they are working in a "RealOffice", or in a "HomeOffice"? Aren't similar monitoring techniques available in either of the offices? What is it about goofing off that "HomeOffice" employees can do that "RealOffice" employees cannot?
Cost, to start with. It's more expensive to pay for broadband connections, cameras and monitors than it is to walk down the hall and look in doors. When I worked from home I could goof off more easily because no one was there to see me do it. Plus, home is where all my toys are. -- EH
Come now Eric, be serious, what company doesn't have a broadband connection?
There's one. Now add one for every employee that works from home.
Especially those employing people in HomeOffices?. (My broadband connection is no more costly than my old dial-up connection was, and to top it off, I can use the same line my DSL is connected for voice (and even modem) connections while I am using the broadband. Cameras cost from $20 to $100, Monitors cost a fraction of the cost of hiring spies to watch people the company doesn't trust.
And all of that costs more than making people come to the same location. Who said anything about spies? That's what managers are for.
It is results that count! I have known people who worked in "RealOffices?" who goofed off 25 to 50% of the time and management knew this, but they were some of the most productive workers in the place! You are approaching HomeOffices? from the wrong perspective, (Ever heard of TheoryXandy?) One says: people will not work and manage themselves, and are not to be trusted, the other says people want to do a good job and to be trusted, and can be trusted. It is the later model of worker and company which will employ the HomeOffice Model.
I am approaching this from the second perspective, mostly because that is the way I look at work I do for others. I also trust others on the same basis, until they give me reason to believe otherwise. It would be my view in starting a HomeOffice Model in my company to place the people I trust to produce first, and then encourage the building up of trust in those who have something to prove in this area.
If I could not trust an employee to work for me honestly in a HomeOffice, I would be foolish to place someone I did not trust in the same setting. So if I had the right employees to start with, any of them could be trusted to work in a "HomeOffice" setting. -- DonaldNoyes
I've tried approaching it from the optimistic position. I've tried trusting people to work from home. I found it was very difficult to maintain that trust. I've seen the same difficulties every time I've worked from home or employed someone who did.
In addition to the "piece work" you mention, other metrics are applicable to other kinds of work. "Design or Project Completed", 100,000.00 worth of sales.
Working 5 days a week and putting in 40 hours a week in the following: manning the telephone in a support center; serving in a dispatch capacity for security firms, food delivery, package pickup and delivery; viewing and monitoring security cameras and recorders (with attendant archiving of the storage media); administrative monitoring and control of a computer network or operation, mailing out all mail articles supplied for a direct-mail operation, acting as a human resources department for companies to small to have their own in the posting and advertising of job requests and retrieving and evaluating applications and resumes; receiving and posting classified advertising either for online or printed media, running a radio or television station which broadcasts pre-recorded segments on a cable system.
Teaching courses and interacting with students in a distance learning high school, college or university, technical school or skills development institution, selling of products and services, or responding to inquiries about such products and services; Serving in intermediate capacity as a broker for transactions between peers or between Manufacturers and Buyers.
Research into questions and the preparing of reports about findings about possible or potential answers to the questions for Businesses and Individuals; Remote answering of telephones for people who cannot or do not wish to answer their phones personally, but who wish to have a professional who will handle the call as a real one real person on one real person level, and who will intelligently and tactfully handle the calls while providing the client with information about who called about what and when; Website development and maintenance; Program development and maintenance; Product development and productionization and many, many more. These are but a small representation of kinds of things which can be done from a "HomeOffice" as well or better than from a "RealOffice". -- DonaldNoyes
Some of those qualify as piece work. They can be objectively measured because the output has a known time/effort estimate. Other tasks you list can't be measured that way. How do you know if a software developer is goofing off or the problems he's working on are more difficult than first imagined? The only way to know how hard he's working is to work in close contact with him.
And you couldn't do that between a "RealOffice" or another "HomeOffice" and the worker's "HomeOffice"?
I couldn't. No technology provides the same experience as working next to someone physically. We can't go to lunch together, we can't bump into each other in the hall, we can't stand outside an office and listen to the typing rhythm before deciding if we should enter.
So you didn't employ these individuals in a HomeOffice setting. Good for you, you followed you instincts and employed a management style which was based on close physical proximity and and frequent and effective interactions.
No I didn't.
I still fail to see why you couldn't use these same individuals in at least part-time "HomeOffice" working arrangments.
I did. That's what soured me on the idea.
Are not many of the problems and difficulties you are mentioning usually conveyed in meeting and Emails rather than face-to-face?
No. The problems I'm mentioning are the things that can't be conveyed by meetings and emails. I can buy the email part of the answer, but perhaps you have a definition of meetings that is different from mine: "A meeting is where at least two people interact with each other about a targeted subject with the goal of reaching conclusions about what the members in the interaction can do about the subject as well as identifying how and when the actions assigned can be completed, or when next reported upon. By the way meeting of this type (face-to-face), can be between people separated by many thousands of miles (even half-a globe away).''
Have you ever paid someone to work at home? -- EH
No, I am an Employee presently, not an employer, but I am working to change that status. When that status changes, I will hire people I can trust to work for me anywhere and who make things that "work".
I encourage you to try it then. I'm not sure there's any other way to understand the suspicion it breeds. I hired people I trusted, but that didn't assuage my feelings. Imagine that a task is late. I want to believe I can trust the employee about the reasons it is late, but the image of them sitting at home playing video games can't be kept out of your mind. Watching them remotely doesn't do any good. It consumes your time and annoys them. -- EH
You say you trusted them, but your feeling and imagination disturbed you because things were "late".
Yes.
If the camera was on "all the time, they would not know you were watching, any more than those typing in the "RealOffice" could know you were "listening to keystrokes" before entering. (I don't think I would need a camera, but if I thought it necessary to see how things were going, I would just drop in for a visit from time to time (during HomeOffice Hours of course), or arrange to meet them for lunch at a place near their HomeOffice for discussions and to pick up on nuances not easily recognized in Emeetings or from Email).
You must live in a small town. I would have had to spend hours driving between their homes and the central office.
I do not live in a small town, but the freeways in my town allow me the ability to drive half a hundred miles in less than an hour, and in several hours, I could drive all the way across the state to another not so small city over two-hundred-fifty miles away. Just think how inconvenient it must be for them to have to do what you complain of twice a day two-hundred and sixty times a year! For a commute time of one-hour, that represents 520 man-hours of unproductive time each year. You would not have to visit them in person but just a few times each year. (But electronically you could visit them many times and do so in a matter of seconds).
It's much more convenient for everyone to commute to a central location than for each manager to commute to multiple distributed locations on a regular basis. A few times a year won't cut it. Software development is a highly social process and needs more intimate contact than that.
Have you ever worked in front of a camera that was on all the time, never knowing when the boss was watching?
There aren't cameras in "RealOffices?" on all the time?
No. There are no cameras in our offices. There is no need for cameras; we can see each other without them.
Next time in your office check for that darkened plastic Hemisphere attached to the ceiling in convenient locations. But all it takes is a small pin-hole. Why in the world would I worry, I would be glad if my boss was taking enough time to be interested in my work-habits, since I never have anything to be ashamed of in this area. Not to mention there are many other ways to monitor work-activity than that of cameras, even the "keystrokes" you spoke of earlier can be monitored electronically rather than from just outside the door. It is however the Theory X proponents who feel such need to monitor and control the people they don't trust.
You never pick your nose?
Reasons why Employers think that HomeOffices are not a GoodIdea
Reasons why Employers think that HomeOffices are a GoodIdea'
Reasons why Employees think that HomeOffices are not a GoodIdea
Reasons why Employees think that HomeOffices are a GoodIdea
My wife has a HomeOffice. She doesn't have an "employer" but rather a number of clients, one of them accounting for most of her business, and others that account for varying amounts.
Her biggest client (an economist in Boston) left his LargeCompany? (where he was a partner) and struck out on his own. After contemplating the costs of leasing an office, buying furniture, buying someone to sit in the furniture, buying office equipment, phones, electricity, and so on, he set about investigating whether the services he needed could be provided by someone "at large" who would bear her own equipment costs, health care costs, taxes, electricity, phones, internet connection, and who would be available at all times, not call in sick, not have family emergencies that left him without service.
He shopped around and eventually found her. She doesn't think like an employee. She is a service provider. She acts in the best interests of the client, protecting him from a variety of assailants. She holds limited power of attorney in several of his interests. She manages a majority of the moving parts in his life. He gets way more value than the dollars he spends.
As GoldOwner(s) and GoalDonor(s) get better at thinking "service provider" instead of "employee" they will be able to construct organizations of responsible, proactive, competent people and the resulting organization can be more nimble than the typical employer/employee pyramid/monolith.
I look forward to playing in that space.
FreeAgentNation, by Daniel Pink (ISBN 0446678791 ) is a good book on this topic.
QuietChange HomeOfficeTechnologies? WorkingWhileTravelling FreeGasoline VirtualOffice
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