BLOG

The entire production staff, including editors, reporters and producers of Inc. Magazine abandoned their Manhattan office last month in a brave experiment to test the practicality of virtual offices and home based work.

Suggested by one of the magazines senior writers, an article in today’s New York Times explains how following the suggestion about evacuating the traditional office space editor Jane Berentson gave the go-ahead – leading to an entire issue being produced outside of their Downtown Manhattan office.

The article that inspired this experiment, which carries the title of “The office is dead, long live the office”, will form the core of the new issue due in April and, while running smoothly overall, raised some interesting issues for the office-less team to deal with.

Amongst the problems faced by the magazines team during their office vacation were balancing home-life with home based work, the lack of camaraderie caused by working alone and the adaptation of using alternative technologies to communicate.

Overall the experiment was said to be a success, with those taking part seeing the benefits of both office and home based work. Are you a business who works outside of the office on a regular basis? Do you find it adds to the productivity of your staff or have you experienced difficulties from not having everyone under one roof? If so, why not let us know your thoughts?

Published by Simon on Monday, 29 March 2010 at 2:20 PM