A place to call my own

It is easy to think, “I will start my own business”.  It is much harder to figure out what that business will be.  Sometimes, like me it is easy.  The business finds you.  I guess I am lucky in that regard, even if my business isn’t really the kind of thing I pictured myself doing.

But when you start a business you quickly find out that it is much more than following your business plan.  You have a ton of details to attend to before you can even make your first dollar.

You have to get your business license, find your clients, get an office, furnish the office, hire your employees and hope and pray that it all works.

Two days ago I went furniture shopping for my office.  Since I won’t be hiring a lot of employees to start I had to decide cubicles or desks.  I hate cubicles.  I never liked working in them but I liked the privacy they offered over plain desks next to each other.

Cubicles, in my opinion also cut down on information being shared.  Project collaboration is reduced and therefore productivity is reduced.  So cubicles are out. 

But, a room full of desks lacks any sense of style or privacy.  Since my work requires a certain degree of artistry and creative thinking, boring doesn’t work.  I can’t have my employees feel like drones who mindlessly pound away at their jobs for 8 hours a day.

After many, many hours of furniture shopping I settled on a compromise between the cubicle and the desk.  It is a diamond shaped desk thing that seats four people and has small partitions that give the illusion of privacy and personal space.  But the partitions are only about ten inches high so communication isn’t blocked.  Plus the desks are big enough for the employee to have room to spread out.

These desks aren’t a space saver, but they fill the need of something that is artistic, fun, professional and personal.  I just hope the employees like it as much as I do.

Then if you have desks, you have to have chairs.  Most employers just choose a cheap ‘secretary’ type chair for the employees and buy something big and comfortable for themselves.

Since I want my employees to feel comfortable and to enjoy being at their desks working, I wanted them to have really nice chairs.  So I tested chairs.  I tested hundreds of chairs.  I felt like a fool bouncing from one chair to the next looking for one that felt just right.

It couldn’t be to hard, it couldn’t be to soft.  The chair back had to be a certain height, the chair had to be low enough where the arms would fit under the edge of the table.

Then I was reminded that not everyone is as tall as me so a chair for shorter people might be nice too.  Great.  That meant hundreds of chairs to revisit.

Eventually I settled on two styles of chairs.  One for taller folks, one for shorter ones.  I will let the employees pick which one they like best.  The chairs are comfortable, high back, black faux leather with arms and wheels.  They adjust six ways from Sunday and don’t cost me a fortune to replace later on if they break.

Now its just a matter of time to see if my employees like them. 

If I seem like I worry too much about my employee happiness, it is because here in China turnover in educated staff is pretty high.  It is very common to see people who change jobs every few months.  I really don’t want my employees doing that.  I need them here for the long term.

Maybe after all my stressing out on setting up a business, I can settle in on stressing out about running the business.

Comments

[fumier]

I have a spare work station going if you need it. It's about 1.5m x 1.6m.

[fumier]

Hang on a second - are you in HK or in China?

[China Expat]

Hiya Fumier,

I am in China. Thank you for the offer though.

I already bought the cubicles. Nice purple ones that will either send my employees running for the hills, inspire their creativity or turn them gay. Or any combination of the 3.