There are ways to encourage collaboration. Most officeless companies use some sort of virtual water cooler, either with a communal chat room on Skype or with one of a handful of specialized services made for this very purpose (see "The Best Collaboration Tools"). And then there's video chat. We tried out several options, including Skype's free offering and a pricey videoconferencing system from Vidyo. The experience is surprisingly intimate, and it allows you to have a more complete sense of who your employees are. (You will be familiar with their homes, their kids, and their taste in casualwear.) But it's still hard to achieve the easy spontaneity of a face-to-face meeting. Setting up a videoconference just to shoot the breeze felt somehow wasteful, and we ended up talking much less to one another than we do in person. "I got my work done, but I really didn't interact with that many people virtually," says Lindsay Silberman, a reporter who joined Inc. just two months before our experiment began. "Not seeing people every day really hindered my ability to bond with everyone else."
From some points of view, of course, that might have been a good thing. "Working virtually makes you a much more effective manager," says Conrad. "When everyone works in proximity, your viewpoint can get clouded, and you can end up giving people a bit more leeway than they really deserve." It's a harsh thing to say, but it's true. Many managers, consciously or not, place a lot of emphasis on their employees' ability to show up on time and stay late. Going virtual removes this proxy.
Cutting down the volume of communication also makes it easier to do certain kinds of work. I was much more productive as a writer at home, where I found myself able to stay focused for long stretches of time, often becoming so engrossed that I would work late into the night, forgetting to stop. On the other hand, when I wasn't writing, I felt isolated; my mood swung wildly from extreme satisfaction one minute to dire self-doubt the next. These feelings are common among remote workers and require regular, deliberate attention from virtual CEOs. "Some of my employees end up feeling out of the loop," says Trifiro. "So once every couple of weeks, I'll just call them up and chat with them for an hour or so about nothing in particular. It helps fill the emotional gap."
Step 5: Explain Yourself
So you have shuttered the office, gone home, and gone virtual. You are saving money and your employees are happy. Your company has never been stronger. The only problem is that your neighbors, customers, and competitors all think you have gone out of business. The day after we announced that we were temporarily shutting down our office, a blogger for the Columbia Journalism Review wrote this: "If I were a staff member at Inc., I'm not sure if I would be approaching this experiment [as] a clever bit of participatory journalism, an innovative, cost-cutting measure that could help save the future of the ailing magazine industry, or just be really freaked out that it sounds eerily like what happens when a title in said industry goes to that virtual workplace in the sky and shuts down for good."
This insinuation -- that our experiment in doing without an office was a prelude to shutting down the business altogether -- betrays a widely held prejudice about virtual work. Outsiders are apt to view even the most successful virtual companies with a measure of skepticism, if not outright derision. Convincing them otherwise means carefully managing perceptions about yourself and your company.
Telecommuters have long dealt with the perception problem by using creative descriptions for what they do. Leigh Buchanan, who has worked as an editor-at-large for Inc. from her home in suburban Boston since 2006, suggested that Inc. employees tell people "I work out of my home office," rather than saying "I work at home." Thanks to services like Google Voice, which allows you to forward calls to any domestic phone number for free, it's getting harder to tell who is at work and who isn't. Most outsiders who called me during our experiment simply assumed I was in the office, and I never bothered to correct them.
Meanwhile, given that 34 million Americans are working from home at least part time, according to the research firm Forrester, outsiders are increasingly less likely to look down on you. During our virtual month, senior editor Nadine Heintz scheduled a meeting with Fellowes, the office-supply company. Not only did the company's representatives happily agree to visit her home in Staten Island -- 45 minutes from Inc.'s headquarters -- but they came during a storm that dumped a foot of snow on New York City. "They acted like we were at the office," she says. She had her husband shovel the driveway, and she served homemade zucchini bread.
Even so, not everyone is so open-minded. "Never say, 'We're a virtual company,' " advises Tony Conrad, who, in addition to founding Sphere, is a partner in True Ventures, a VC firm that has invested in several virtual companies. "Say, 'Our headquarters is in San Francisco' -- or wherever -- 'but we have employees all over the place.' " He recommends renting a small office if necessary; you can use it for meetings with potential investors, clients, and business partners. This is the approach taken by one of Conrad's portfolio companies, Automattic, which leases an office on San Francisco's Pier 38, a block from founder Matt Mullenweg's home. It has some desks but no computers, and most of the time it's empty. "It makes visitors and partners feel better," says Mullenweg. "But I don't go in at all unless I have a meeting."
Though a company's virtual status might be seen as a downside by potential customers, it can be an asset when it comes to hiring. Automattic is based in the Bay Area, where competition for the sort of talented engineers the company needs is brutal. But Mullenweg can hire from a talent pool that extends well beyond Northern California; and, in fact, only seven employees live locally.
Moreover, the option to work from home can be an attractive benefit even to those who don't immediately take you up on it, a fact that became clear as we attempted to hire a new Web producer during our virtual month. "I had to reassure people coming in for interviews that we hadn't laid off the entire staff," says Mike Hofman, the deputy editor for Inc.com. "But I think it made us more appealing, conveying a sense that this was a workplace where employees are allowed flexibility and where you are judged by the work you get done, not simply for showing up." Take that, Columbia Journalism Review.
