For some businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic changed things overnight. Employees went home with their laptops and some haven’t returned to the office in over a year. What people thought would be temporary is looking very permanent.
Corporations have closed headquarters and terminated their leases early, and one survey of small business owners found that only one in five plans to reopen their physical store. As you think about the future, do you need an office?
If you’ve been asking yourself if paying rent on that storefront or office is truly necessary, here are some questions to help you make the decision whether or not to renew your lease.
Do Customers Expect to Meet with You in Person?
While everyone has had to adjust to quarantine and shelter-in-place, that doesn’t mean that everyone likes it. Have clients complained that they can’t come by the office, or drop off paperwork in person?
If your customers have set a clear expectation that things will return to normal, you may still need to have a physical present to keep their business. Also, if your sales process depends heavily on forming relationships and building trust, it’s easier in person.
How Easy Has it Been to Work from Home?
No matter how great your digital tools, sometimes a face to face meeting works better. Do you need to sit down and go through files, laying out papers side by side and asking and answering questions? Has it been difficult to transition to a virtual world, and have you dealt with miscommunications?
Not all work is done best through a video chat or via email. Emails make it difficult to judge tone and sometimes a reader can take offense where you intended none. If you work with sensitive issues - such as family care, conflict resolution - or regularly explain complex topics to clients, you may still need the ability to meet face-to-face.
Can you Sell Online?
That same survey found that small business owners who could sell online increased their online sales by 41% during the pandemic, while those who only had a physical presence saw sales plummet 61%. Your online sales might have supplemented physical store sales during the pandemic, so could you transition to selling online 100%?
If a 100% online model works for you, you could save on overhead and personnel costs. You might have to increase spending elsewhere - such as investing in inventory management software, or hiring more warehouse personnel - but it could work out to net cost savings.
Can you Attract New Customers Online?
Attracting new customers is essential to both maintain your business - to compensate for attrition - and to grow. During the last year, many businesses have grown savvier about social media marketing, SEO, and positioning themselves to attract new customers online. But not all businesses work in a digital world.
Before you decide to close your office or store, examine how easy it’s been for you to bring in new business during the pandemic. Look at the key performance indicators for your social media campaigns and analyze how they’ve fared.
If you’ve been able to successfully connect with your customers online, then maybe you could successfully close an office and continue the trend.
Do Your Employees Like Working from Home?
While employees report missing interactions with co-workers, six in ten U.S. employees prefers working from home. They can be just as productive, if not moreso, when not constantly interrupted or drawn into chitchat. And they value the flexibility that working from home offer them.
While the initial transition might have been rough, and you might have had to learn new management skills, if productivity has bounced back or even increased, continuing to work from home could be a permanent option.
Can you Downsize?
Maybe you can’t go entirely work from home and take your business fully online, but could you downsize? Even corporations that are keeping some offices open have reduced their footprint, subleasing or simply closing floors in their buildings.
Think about asking employees to come into the office only during crucial periods, or a few days a week or month, and downsizing your office’s square footage. This way, you would still have a location to meet with clients and sell in person. Need to hash out the solution to a complex problem? Ask everyone to come into the office that day.
Sometimes the solution isn’t to close offices entirely, but to have a hybrid model.
Ultimately, there are pros and cons to permanently closing your doors and doing business without a physical office. You could try it and find that, eventually, you prefer being in the office. Or, a hybrid model could end up being the best solution. But, after the last year, one thing is for sure. You’ll know how to quickly pivot and figure out what works for you.