The Corona crisis hit us pretty hard. Because our platform is currently most often used in tourism and museums, we had to accept some losses in new sales. But the crisis also brought something positive: We have learned to reorganize our work – online collaboration has become more and more important in teams and with customers, the home office has now completely replaced our real office and we are currently no longer organizing offline events.
So why having a real office? Good question, because that alone costs a five-digit amount for rent, electricity, internet, insurance, etc. We will therefore close down our HQ in Villacher Strasse 51 by the end of the year. Office? No longer required. Instead, our employees will receive a bonus from next year, which is intended to cushion the costs of internet and electricity a little.
If you really still need an office, I can warmly recommend our former office to you. It is well located, inexpensive, there are three parcels close to the center and the infrastructure is right - it is still available at Willi Mann Immobilien.
The decision was not made easily:
- For a long time, we were of the opinion that all employees should sit around a table as much as possible – because of the flow of ideas. But on the one hand, there are tools in the form of Slack or Microsoft Teams that also ensure quick ways for communication. On the other hand, we have experienced that it is not necessary to distrust employees in the home office. It works. And it works fine.
- So then because of a representative address for customer appointments? Well, the awesome hipster start-up office with a football table and a large selection of drinks and designer furniture ... we never could (or did not want to) afford it anyway. The reality also showed that customer appointments take place either with the customer's location or online anyway.
- We will move offline events like our Mobile Content Night online.
- It may look strange to one or the other customer if a company doesn't have a dedicated location. But for how long? I think this is an unstoppable trend.
Well, I'm not 100 percent satisfied, because certainly social contacts will be lost or become more superficial. But the world around is changing rapidly. In contrast to that for private houses and condominiums, the market for commercial real estate has declined sharply since the beginning of the pandemic.
The decisive factor for us was a book that I would like to recommend to everyone: “Remote - Office not required” by Jason Fried (Amazon | Audible). It shows very well how employees of a company the size of Basecamp can work well together over long distances.
Justin Stephens