5 Things You Miss When Not Working in an Office With Your Team

I was an early adopter of the cloud, so I’ve been working that way for a long time. I’ve written how-to articles and written about the benefits. I rarely miss having an office or an onsite team, but recently it just popped into my head that I sometimes I do miss it and it made me think about the downsides of the remote office and working in the cloud, which isn’t written about as much.

5 things you might miss if you move to the cloud.

Having a cloud based business (or a few) has loads of benefits, but just like any living in any situation, sometimes the other pastures look greener.

1. The officeSometimes I miss having an office with a team working in your business. Face-to-face collaboration is a great way to solve problems. Group calls using visual tools like skype are excellent, but sometimes you can’t replace the ‘hey, what do you think about this?’ conversation which is more tricky with a remote team that might not be online when you are.
2. StructureThe cloud gives you the work from anywhere and when ever you want lifestyle, which 99% of the time is wonderful, but it also allows clients to know that if the pressure is on you’re probably working late or on the weekend. They can say in a casual conversation during business hours ‘will you be working on this later’ and you respond comfortably with ‘yes’, which opens the door for them to know that you can always be ‘on’.You can accidentally start to think about your work schedule as being a 7 days a week possibility and before you know it, you haven’t ‘scheduled’ yourself any down time, which is essential for renewing your brain.I try to schedule ‘off time’ and will put in my diary if I have a 7 day a week working team so they know there are times I can’t be contacted, when my brain is having a break. This isn’t because I don’t want to take weekends, but I work when my brain is on and sometimes that includes the weekend. I also need systems to communicate to my team when I’m switching off.
3. Letting goWorking in the cloud with a remote team really tests the control-freak side of you (which most business owners are guilty). I love technology and so work with new hardware and software. If your remote team isn’t working with a similar level of technology (an old computer, smaller screen, slower internet, or different software), then they might not be able to work like you and it can impact on productivity. It is easy to take back doing aspects because you think you can do it faster rather than investigating better ways to provide remote training.
4. Dressing for workThere is something that shifts in your head space when you get dressed for work and it is easy when you have a home office to go too quickly from bed to desk which doesn’t move you mentally to a professional space.
5. CommutingWhen you commute, the traffic and public transport might be a nightmare, but there is a positive aspect to the shift your mind takes when you travel from home to work. You can also miss out on quality reading, listening to podcasts, and email sorting time which you can fill travel time.

Shared working businesses I know there are businesses like The Hub, which has been in Melbourne for a few years and opening soon in Sydney and Adelaide. They have their own benefits, different to being in an office or at home, and they’d alleviate some of the issues I’m missing, but not all of them. It is why I like events like Sydney Business Month because they’re an escape from some of the isolation of working from home and I can spend May and September with a group of peers. It is always greener on the other side…   What do you, or think you would, miss when working from home remotely?