John Linton Yesterday was a very enjoyable day - and not just because the Melbourne Cup atmosphere puts almost everybody in a good mood and the girls in the office were wearing their Melbourne cup finery making a kaleidoscopic array of colour in the office - they are a very eye catching group of feminine pulchritude. I followed my grandfather's sound advice of never betting on horse races when the going is wet or heavy and I was a little disappointed that I didn't as I would have picked the boxed trifecta - though I suppose that's what everyone says after the race is over. The sales results for the day, across all services 'held up' and showed no traditional Melbourne Cup day 'dip' which was an added bonus.
We met with our bank to discuss how we, personally, could finance the purchase of more floor space if we decided to go that way and were pleasantly surprised that we could finance so much more than we had thought we could and, despite yesterday's RBA decision that the rate we could achieve was still so realistic. It widens our options if we go down that path which is useful flexibility. As we will need to make a decision on this issue sooner rather than later there are some longer term considerations.....not the least of which is the role of 'working from home' in our operational future and how the changes we are implementing within Exetel will impact our needs for Australian floor space. We partly addressed this issue by setting up the Sri Lankan operation where we can get super-premium standard floor space for a third the cost of our 'average quality' floor space in North Sydney. However it would be impractical to use Sri Lanka for the functions we currently run out of North Sydney.
Of our 48 or so Australian employees, four currently work from home - Steve (mostly), Annette and two Level 4 support engineers. This has been in place (for Steve and Annette) since we started business and has operated with no real/any problems. The personnel working in the Sydney office are largely sales people, network and corporate support engineers, syadmin and database development plus the senior levels of F and A. While you could make a case for some, or even all, of these positions being suitable 'work from home' candidates I am unconvinced. However confronted with committing a further $A2 million of our personal money to the operation of the business or a further $A20,000 monthly rental increase plus $100,000 or so cash for the fit out, it does give very good reasons for considering just how applicable working from home is to our business right at this moment....and in the longer term. Possibly some people might think that an additional $20,000 a month for a company of "Exetel's size" is a trivial sum. Perhaps for companies operated differently to Exetel it is trivial - but I don't think of it that way - especially in these difficult financial times.
So, we will discuss the issues of having more personnel 'work from home' to determine whether or not that could defer/eliminate the need for us to buy/rent more North Sydney floor space over the next week or so. I will also see whether I can find some companies similar to Exetel who have already gone down this path to see if I can get some experienced advice on the realities of this sort of operational arrangements rather than the theory that is so readily propounded by people who have never actually managed a business that uses this method of employing people.
One more thing to 'worry about'.
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