A couple of years ago, we took the plunge and moved our team away from the office and toward working from home. The transition went shockingly smoothly, and we encountered very few bumps along the road.

We went from having three locations with about 20,000 square feet of real estate to four locations with dramatically less space. Our current space is mostly devoted to conference rooms, with one small facility for handling documents and mail.

Over the past two years, we’ve reduced the space even more as we’ve found less and less need for the space as more and more client meetings have moved to the phone and video conferencing. We had space going unused when attorneys realized they’d have to change out of their pajamas to come to a client meeting. Suddenly, the phone worked just as well for meeting in the office as for resolving cases. Of course, a suit is still required for court.

We’re now in the midst of moving one of our spaces to a new location in the same building. The move has given us the opportunity to redesign our space and has resulted in a thorough reanalysis of our space usage.

We’re making some changes.

Our Old Office Space

Let me give you a feel for the old space. The old space has a lobby, six conference rooms, a receptionist office (with a window to the lobby), an attorney workroom, and a kitchen. It’s about 2,600 square feet.

Most significantly, the old space has two administrative assistants working in the receptionist office. They are the only team members who work daily from the office. Interestingly, they are a significant expense. They cost us in excess of $100,000 per year when you consider salary and benefits. Their salary is nearly double the rent on the space. Why two admins? Realistically, we need an extra administrative assistant to cover the desk. Between vacations, sick leave, lunch breaks, etc., it’s really a two-person job if we want the desk covered full time. The payroll cost is the main expense of that office.

Leveraging the Executive Suite Option

Our other spaces are in executive suite facilities. Oddly, the rent per square foot is dramatically higher in those spaces. However, the overall cost is lower because we don’t have the associated payroll expense of covering the front desk. We can rent comparable space for a much lower rate in the executive suite space. Admittedly, we lease less space in these facilities, but we have the option—on a daily basis—to expand and contract as we need additional room. They all rent conference rooms on an as-needed basis. We can go from two rooms to four in the blink of an eye.

Now, as we redesign, we’re looking at ways to cut the payroll cost associated with this new space.

Why not move this location to an executive suite? We’re dealing with a few factors in that decision. First, we have an unexpired lease in the building. The landlord agreed to release us, and we looked at the available executive suite spaces. Incredibly, in this particular location, the executive suite business is booming. Most locations have no vacancies, and those that have space are charging a premium. Additionally, we use this space a bit differently than the other spaces because of the document processing we do in this location. It was, however, a close call.

We decided to move within the building and keep a traditional lease.

Moving to a Self-Service Model

So what are we doing in the new space?

Because our primary goal is to minimize the payroll expense associated with the new space, we’d like to move from two positions covering the front desk to one. Does that mean we’ll eliminate the second position? Nope, but we’ll have added flexibility in filling it as we can give that employee the flexibility to work from home, and we can outsource more of those duties.

We want the new space to be more self-service than the old space. Our design objective is to make the space work with less administrative support.

We’ve made a few changes:

• The new space will have seven conference rooms instead of six.
• We’ll still have a lobby and receptionist office, but no attorney workroom.
• We eliminated the kitchen and are adding a “cafe area” with self-service drinks.
• We’ll have one of those evil, earth-destroying coffee pod machines, and we’re installing a refrigerator with a glass display for drinks.
• We’re moving a Wi-Fi printer to the same common area so attorneys can send documents to print without having to retrieve them from the attorney workroom.
• We’re also putting a credit card and check processing machine in the same area (our attorneys in executive suites have had this equipment in the room all along). Basically, we’re shifting these simple functions from the admins to the attorneys. Thankfully, picking up a document, showing a client the drink offerings, and running a credit card aren’t particularly burdensome.

Streamlining the Administrative Function

We’re also looking at moving some other functions away from the front desk as well.

• First, we’ve eliminated the locking door between the lobby and the conference rooms. This seems trivial, but it required someone to “buzz people in” or greet them in the lobby. Now we’re connecting the entire space. Opening this up enables attorneys expecting a client’s arrival to be more available to assist in greeting the client.
• Second, we’re adding a video terminal to the front desk so that backup for bathroom and lunch breaks can be handled remotely. We’re exploring services offering this support, along with considering some of our existing team working remotely for the role.
• Finally, we’re setting up a system for clients picking up documents and delivery services dropping off packages. This is tricky, and we haven’t yet figured it out: it’s a work in progress.

Navigating these issues will enable us to move another employee home, which helps us with recruiting and retention costs. It also increases productivity and gives us more flexibility to make more of our costs variable. However, making this change, while seemingly trivial, may be the most challenging experience we’ve had with shifting our team to working remotely. These last two positions are involved in doing work that may require a human presence. We’ll soon be figuring out whether that’s the case.