Importance of the Place Where You Work

Where you work is a critical factor in how efficiently you work and how customers and others perceive your business. In some businesses location is everything - if you open a shop, for example, the top priority must be to find the right premises. If you are tucked away round corner passers-by might be in short supply. It is always worth spending a few hours counting the number of people who walk past. Location can, for some, be unimportant. Thanks to technology a freelance trainer or computer programmer can work almost anywhere. For other businesses there is a wide range of choice. Indeed, the choice can be bewildering - do you want somewhere small to reflect your initial projected level of business or do you need somewhere larger for when you meet your planned targets in six months? Do you need a unit or an entire factory? Do you need one office or a suite of offices?

To a large extent it is a lottery. If you are hugely successful you may well find yourself in a building, which is too cramped. But you don't want to be desperately seeking orders as your large office or factory is lying empty and idle. Caution is probably the best advice. After all, some of the world's most successful companies started in inauspicious surroundings. A garage in Palo Alto, California, is now registered as Californian historical landmark number 976, the birthplace of Silicon Valley'. It was here in 1938 that William Hewlett and David Packard began Hewlett-Packard.

Again the two crucial elements must be your customers and finance. When selecting the location and type of premises you must bear in mind:

• location of customers. If you set up a long way from customers you will incur extra delivery costs and may lose out through being distant from the people who matter.
• location of suppliers. If you rely on a small number of suppliers who are based in a particular area it is unwise to move to somewhere hundreds of miles away.
• your current location. Do you need to move and, if so, why?
• Competition. Where are your competitors located and why?
  

As small businesses tend to rely more on co-operation with other firms and developing subcontracting networks, it is important that the location is right. A number of other elements need to be borne in mind:

• The nature of the business
• Technical matters (such as fitting machinery in)
• Business aspirations - If you know that to make a profit you need to make so many items which require a certain amount of space, then you can. Many calculate the minimum amount mistakenly of space required.
  

A balance has to be struck between your current reality and your aspirations. It is unwise to building complete with fountain afford it. But in many nesses, it is important to be.

The death of the office

Working at home has one clear advantage: cost. There are no hidden extras ... apart from additional insurance to cover your business, probably extra heating costs and an extraordinarily high phone bill.

It is estimated that there are around four million people in the United Kingdom alone now working from home - a figure anticipated to rise to five million by the year 2000. It is little wonder that home workers are increasingly being targeted as a potentially lucrative new market. Alcatel's new 2592 Screen Phone, for example, aims to provide 'an extra pair of hands with no weekly wage' - it acts as an answer phone, address book and appointments scheduler, helpfully reminding you of your commitments with a preprogrammed message. Why employ an assistant when technology can do the job for you?

To many self-employed people, the idea of working at home appears very attractive. They fondly imagine themselves sitting on comfortable chairs reading the paper, popping upstairs occasionally to do a little bit of work. Reality may well prove a disappointment. The logistics of working at home can be complex.

Others are less enthusiastic. While numbers of home workers are growing, what is surprising is that so few people have actually taken advantage of technology to make the leap homewards. In theory at least, huge numbers of people could work equally efficiently at home, away from the distractions of the office. Yet people appear perversely addicted to commuting and there is still a strong attraction to the traditional office environment. They like the social side of going to work in the same place and meeting people face to face, rather than communicating by modem and fax.

While the culture of the office remains a considerable lure, there is also a great deal of suspicion of those who choose to work at home. Even if you accomplish far more, 'working at home' can be seen as a euphemism for avoiding work. How can you call sitting in front of the fire doing a bit of background reading work? What about all the distractions - the children, window-cleaner, telephone calls from gossiping relatives? And the temptations - reading the paper, watching the television, gardening, painting and decorating? In fact, anything rather than working.

'In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too yourself. Unless you're running all the time you are gone, observed Microsoft's Bill Gates of the computer industry. The same is now true of virtually all business sectors. As a result, businesses are looking to technology to deliver tangible business benefits. The emphasis is shifting to technology which is practical rather than technology for its own sake. Technology must add value, allowing people to work more effectively or to work in places where previously they could not.