Everyone Works At Home
Rick Boyd used to spend US$500 a month on gas and tolls commuting 48 miles a day between his home in Westchester County, N.Y., and his office in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J.
Now Boyd doesn’t commute any more because his company, Chorus, which provides clinical and management software for community health centers, has gone virtual.
Chorus closed its Hasbrouck Heights headquarters in early June and its other office, in Stafford, Texas (outside of Houston), in early July. Now all of the company’s 35 employees and full-time consultants work at home, and for the most part, they love it.
Boyd, who is Chorus’s CIO, says the company decided to close its offices to save money and spare employees the hassle and rising cost of commuting and because it had the necessary technology to support such a move.
President and CEO A.J. Schreiber says Chorus can continue to serve customers while simultaneously saving $400,000 a year simply by closing its 15,000 square feet of office space.
Sure, breaking leases and telecom contracts is costing the company money, but the long-term savings far outweigh those short-term costs, says Schreiber. “We wouldn’t have done this if it would have had a negative impact on our ability to serve customers,” he adds.
Chorus’s transformation into a virtual company staffed with telecommuters hasn’t been flawless, but none of the hurdles the company has encountered at this point have proven insurmountable.
Through research, planning and some trial-and-error, the company addressed many of the cultural challenges associated with telecommuting and managing virtual workforces.
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Photo by Chorus.
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