A week in the life of George - SME MD

I got persuaded down this route following a presentation I attended a couple of years back. I think it was via Business Link I heard about it from though the presenter was from e-Hampshire. Anyway, the case-study they used of a company benefiting from ‘Broadband enabled working’ wasn’t quite a competitor, but it got me thinking it easily could have been.

When you’re small like us, you need to make the most of every possible competitive advantage and this seemed like one tailor-made for us. With this one we were even handed some vouchers to get Broadband linked. It’s certainly changed my life, revenue has quadrupled, we’re now getting overseas business as a result of our website and as far as I can see, staff have taken to this more informal way of working very well.

Having said that, we’ve worked very hard to make sure no one feels isolated, un-supported or left behind. I personally make sure that I check-in with everyone - at least once a week ideally. We have a few more evening work cum social events too now to help keep motivation high.

We certainly seem to have achieved a more stable staff position and it’s been good to get some very able new people on board too. Someone told me that these days 70% of graduates expect ‘Tele or Teleworking-working’ to be on offer. Well it is here and we’re benefiting from it.

 

Monday - I try to work from home at least two days per week – usually Monday’s and Thursday’s – though I am doing an increasing amount of overseas travel. I am in Geneva today – I flew out from the local airport via EasyAir last evening. Meetings for most of the day, but chance to check my email now as I have my wireless enabled laptop with me. I also have a PDA but there a bit fiddly for anything other than one sentence email responses, plus no spam email filter, so much prefer the laptop, plus there’s a couple of documents I want to refer to for the meeting. It seems to work out at about £10 for an hour’s connection at the hotel, but worth it.

Tuesday – It’snot been the easiest of days yesterday; culminating in a two hour flight delay and no decision from the client. Thank goodness for a home based day – gives me time to think and fit in a couple of errands I didn’t get to do over the weekend. Did around 8 hours work over a 12 hour period – including, getting our amended quote off to the Geneva client.

Wednesday – I’ m getting more organised now and realising the best deal for all concerned is smaller tasks and interaction when in the office with the more complex tasks left for home. Staff members now don’t hesitate to phone me on my home based days and say that actually see more of me than they did before. Probably, like today when I’m in the office, I don’t spend the whole day behind the keyboard or one the phone and become much more visible to the staff.

Thursday – In Chester for a conference, so an early start, but the opportunity to do some work on the train and check my email and answer messages. I still do a lot of travelling, but much less by car. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was saving at least £50 per week on fuel.

Friday – Well working from home – well kind of, it’s at June’s house (a fellow Director). There was a thunderstorm yesterday and it knocked out my modem/router. Crazy thing was I knew about the power surge thing but had never got round to it…but I will now! However, all was not lost as I was still able to log-on at June’s as she has a four way hub. It was also useful to talk and chew over a couple of issues too.

 

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