Sales Transformation Roadshow

Sean and Zach Lawless at the Sales Transformation Roadshow at Google Irvine

Just this past week, Conectrix had the privilege of sending their employees (me included) to the Sales Transformation Roadshow at Google Irvine. The first speaker, Crisantos Hajibrahim, gave a really awesome speech about the future of the office space. He discussed how the two greatest costs for businesses today are people and real estate. People, as in employees, and real estate, as in the physical property of the business. 

Hajibrahim went into a lot of surprising statistics and data about the greatest aforementioned costs of running a business. Two particularly interesting facts were that the average employee only works about 2.8 hours a day despite being paid for a full day of work. The second fact was that millennials are willing to accept less pay if they can work remotely. 

Hajibrahim gave a brief anecdote where he recalled speaking to someone from a large business who said that their boss would often give everyone the option to work at the office or from home. However, what the business found was that the employees only went into the office on the days that the boss was actually there himself. This story reminded me of how no one on my football team would go to the optional early morning workouts. Clearly, employees don’t want to work at an office. So why keep wasting money on the rent for one? 

“The two greatest costs for businesses today are people and real estate.”

Hajibrahim concluded that when considering all of these facts and data, the future of work is work from anywhere. When he said this, there were some people in the audience who chuckled. Hajibrahim acknowledged this. Employers don’t trust their employees to be productive if they work at home. As for me, I thought what he had to say made plenty of sense. With the connectivity of technology, why not exploit the desire of your employees to work from home? Especially if they will pick convenience over higher pay. 

Another plus to having employees work remotely is that businesses wouldn’t need to spend loads of money on physical offices anymore. He gave another quick story about how he got to visit some beautiful offices in San Diego. These offices had games, nice furniture, decor, snacks beyond count – but, no one was in the offices. Regardless of the efforts of these businesses, employees didn’t want to be there. 

As I recall the presentation, it reminded me of the opening to Office Space, where the protagonist is stuck in hellish traffic on his way to a job he despises. The modern worker doesn’t want to work in an office nor are they productive while they are there. So why force them to work at an office when we have the capability for workers to work from anywhere.