There are certain benefits to running a start-up business from home – the most obvious being cost savings. However, if your business is doing well,
there is likely to come a time when home working becomes more of a hindrance than a convenient, money-saving solution. But when should you move into an office – is there ever a right time to take the plunge?
Many freelancers, sole traders and start-ups eventually come up against the same problems, which are the key signs that it’s time to look for another solution. For example:
- You’re ready to start hiring employees, but there is nowhere for them to work
- You’re concerned about professionalism – without proper meeting space, you end up meeting clients in noisy coffee shops or in your cluttered living room, neither of which give your business a professional image.
- Your work-life balance is off-kilter – with no opportunity to leave work at work, it’s very difficult to switch off and enjoy a family and social life
- Productivity is dropping – enthusiasm for launching your own business may have driven you in the early days, but your focus might be slipping now that you’ve been working at home for some time.
These are all signs that home working may not be the best fit for your business anymore, but what’s the solution? There are three main options available to you – leasing office space on a long-term contract, or the more flexible option of renting a serviced office. You can also use a co-working space, which, as one of our blogs describes, is particularly great for freelancers or employees of larger organisations which don’t work close to their main office.
As we explored in our blog about renting a serviced office compared to leasing office space, to determine which is the best option for your start-up company, both now and in the future, there are important questions you need to be asking yourself.
What can you afford to do?
You should only start exploring office space solutions when your business has the funds to do so, whilst still maintaining a financial safety net. To choose between leasing office space and renting a serviced office, consider set-up costs. You may be able to afford a long-term lease on office space in a good location, but have you considered office supplies, computer and printing equipment, furniture, heating, electricity, transportation, phone, internet and reception services, to name but a few? So many business owners miscalculate the true cost of setting up a new office from scratch, which can be disastrous for a start-up that is not yet established.
A serviced office can be the ideal stepping stone for start-ups, as it has none of the initial setup costs of leasing an office. At Carrwood Park, for example, serviced offices are rented on both short and long-term leases, giving companies greater flexibility, and there are no hidden costs at all. You ask for the services you need and these are all included in the upfront cost of your package, from reception and call answering services to printing, meeting and conferencing. This allows you to accurately calculate how much it will cost you to move into your new office space.
In our ’11 Myths about Serviced Office Space: Busted’ blog, we talked about one of the common misconceptions about serviced offices is that they are expensive. However, if you actually did a comparison between what you actually get from a serviced office package and the setup costs of a leased office, you’d find that serviced offices would often turn out to be the most cost-effective.
Where will your company be in 5 years’ time?
This is the second crucial question to ask yourself before deciding between leasing premises and renting a serviced office. If you commit to a long-term lease when the future growth of your business is far from guaranteed, you may not be able to afford such hefty costs. Your business may not grow at the speed you hope it will, so you might end up with office space that is far larger (and more expensive) than you’ll ever need. It’s really difficult to anticipate the future needs of your business. As we mentioned in an earlier blog, the flexibility serviced offices provide, is one of the key benefits of this type of office.
Serviced offices can be rented for short or long periods, and at a facility like Carrwood Park where there are many different sizes of offices available, you can simply move into a larger space if and when you need it. Download our size guide to find out more about how to decide what size office you need.
