Yet earlier this year, when Google interviewed its employees about what they valued most at work, none of these extravagant benefits made the top of the list. Neither did salary. Instead, employees cited access to “even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.”

Tangibles like salary and benefits aren’t enough to guarantee that your best and brightest creatives will remain engaged. Indeed, a recent landmark study by Arnold Worldwide of 3,000 employees and 500 executive leaders across a range of communication and advertising firms found that 30 percent of the advertising workforce say they’ll be gone from their job within 12 months.

Take Jill, an outstanding, experienced copy editor whom Agency X recently recruited at considerable expense from one of its chief rivals. Despite her outward success, she’s unsure how she’s performing, where she stands in the company, and how she fits into the overall goals of the agency. Her pay is great, she loves the Friday office happy hour, but over time, she finds herself feeling demotivated by the lack of communication, and checks out.

The loss of star performers like Jill doesn’t just leave a talent vacuum to fill; it also leaves a gaping hole in the bottom line. Indeed, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal calculated that it typically costs a company about half a position’s annual salary to recruit for that job ¾ and several times that if the position requires rare skills.

So how can your company keep its stars engaged? It comes down to creating a culture of communication — one in which employees know where the organization is headed, how they fit into these plans, and what’s expected of them. Here are a few key strategies your agency can employ to make this happen.

1. Create a culture of education

The average Starbucks barista gets more training in a year than the average employee in a communications company, according to the Arnold Worldwide study.

For employees, the single most important motivational factor was the ability to learn. Yet the study found a huge disconnect when it comes to perceptions about company training. While 90 percent of employees say they learn by figuring things out on their own, only 25 percent of executives think that employees learn independently.

To keep employees motivated, agencies need to build a culture of learning, where employees leave more enriched at the end of each day.

2. Provide regular, consistent feedback

Employee feedback is a critical part of the education process, and shouldn’t just be relegated to the annual review. To be effective, feedback needs to be specific and actionable. But that’s not always how it works.

In a study by Leadership IQ, 53 percent of employees said that when their boss praises excellent performance, the feedback does not provide enough useful information to help them repeat it. And 65 percent responded that when their boss criticizes poor performance, it doesn’t provide enough useful information to help them correct the issue.

Feedback, both positive and constructive, is most effective when given right away. Negative feedback given a month after the fact can lead to a passive-aggressive environment in which an employee feels powerless to act on the advice.

Think of it this way: no one wants to go a full day knowing their price tag was hanging from the back of their shirt, or the remnants of the salad they had for lunch were still stuck in their teeth. If an employee does something well, that activity should be encouraged. And if there’s room for improvement, they should be given the opportunity to learn for their next task.

3. Set time aside for weekly 1:1 meetings

At first, most employees and managers will cringe at the idea of yet another meeting. But instituting weekly 1:1 meetings can be the most important step you take to retaining your top performers.

In its quest to build a better boss, Google discovered that its worst managers weren’t consistent in their 1:1 meetings; some focused on meeting with people who were underperforming, while others met primarily with the top performers.

Consequently, Google implemented the best practice of 1:1 meetings with all team members.

These meetings can cover anything and everything from upcoming projects to the latest client news. With each week, discussions about goals, feedback, and concerns become a lot more natural unlike the awkward, starchy conversations during annual reviews. Over time, it becomes easier for both sides to raise potential problems and deal with them early on, before they fester into something destructive.

4. Manage the grunt work properly

Not every project is going to be awesome. That’s just the way business works. And chances are your employees understand this.

However, managers need to handle such projects responsibly and that means a few things. Boring projects should always be balanced with more stimulating work. Employees should always be told how any grunt works fits into the overall needs of the company (“If we do a good job on x, we’re hoping the client will give us their cool launch next year”). And specific parameters should always be set for the boring stuff ¾ meaning employees should always see light at the end of the tunnel.

5. Publicly acknowledge good work

All too often, managers see motivation in terms of financial compensation, but money is far from the only way to effectively reward talented employees. A 2009 survey by McKinsey Quarterly asked which incentives were the most effective in motivating employees. The top two responses were: “Praise and commendation from immediate manager” (67 percent), and “Attention from leaders” (62 percent).

Praise and commendation go a long way in making employees feel noticed and valued. And the impact of a pat on the back is multiplied when it’s done publicly. Through public commendations, employees not only feel the support and respect of their manager, but the entire organization as well (including top-level executives). Creating a framework for “social recognition” will encourage a culture of appreciation throughout your firm.

Keeping your rockstar employees on board has always been important, and don’t think that economic uncertainty will keep your employees around. Your company has worked hard to recruit some bright people and great talent; make sure an opaque work environment doesn’t drive them into the arms of your competition.

Learn more about how to keep remote workers happy and your team collaborating at GigaOM’s Net:Work event on December 8, 2011.

Daniel Debow is co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, a social performance management platform.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Esparta. 

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast

As I’ve interviewed owners of newly established co-working spaces recently, the answer appears to be: not really. Craig Baute, who opened Creative Density in Denver just a few months ago, for example, told us that for his fledgling space, “awareness is the biggest problem.”

Several coworking spaces already exist in Denver and while some of them might be skeptical of the new competition, Baute insisted that it’s ignorance — not each other — that they should be worried about. “Coworking spaces in cities can work together because they’re not in competition with each other. The biggest competition is concept awareness,” he said.

And if you think Baute has it bad when it comes to getting the word out in Denver, spare a thought for Noelle Stary, co-founder of Launchpad Creatives in suburban New Jersey. She recently visited an event put on by her local Small Business Administration and spoke to the group’s president after the event. Here’s what happened:

I’m talking to him about, hey, we’re big believers in what entrepreneurs are doing, and we start talking about coworking spaces, and the president of the Small Business Administration is like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never even heard of the word.

“Clearly coworking is very big in London. It’s really big in New York,” says Stary, but you mention “co-working spaces in New Jersey and people in suburbia are like, what is this? I don’t get it.”

All for one and one for all

So what are these newly founded spaces doing to raise their profile. Both Baute and Stary are banding together with other local spaces to pool their powers and attract attention. Before moving to Denver, Baute was involved in the coworking movement in Toronto where, as he says:

We were planning a coworking week where all of our members could move between the spaces — we thought that might get some media attention — then also banding together to create a Toronto coworking pass where you can just buy a ten-day punch card and go to all the other spaces.

Now he hopes to bring something similar to Colorado. And Stary has similar plans in the works for New Jersey’s coworking spaces, including a regional coworking alliance to raise awareness. “We’re actually going to try and set up a coworking visa that you could purchase from the coworking alliance,” she explained. With the visa, members could use their choice of spaces within a 40-mile radius.

Matchmaking for entrepreneurs

Stary and her business partner Eric Duchin have also come up with another creative way to raise the profile of the movement — they’re offering to match entrepreneurs who use their space with a local college student willing to serve as an eager intern. It’s a win for everyone involved, explained Stary, as harried entrepreneurs get some extra help (and a place to work with the intern that isn’t their living room), young people get a hands-on learning opportunity and coworking gets some new converts. “We’ve gotten a huge response,” Stary told us.

They’re even thinking of scaling up the service by offering to pair entrepreneurs and interns at other coworking spaces through the wonders of technology. Stary explains: “It basically would be almost like a Match.com. Here are the interns. Here are the entrepreneurs. You pick who you want and you can set that up through the different types of coworking spaces.”

Coworking is one form of the changing concept of the “office” from an 8-to-5 day at corporate HQ to a more fluid and dynamic workspace. We’ll discuss this in-depth at our upcoming event Net:Work on December 8.

Image courtesy of Flickr user {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}, CC 2.0.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Building a better paywall: strategies for monetizing news content
• Flash analysis: Steve Jobs

In a highly thought-provoking plea to rethink (again) our approach to design at work, New York Times architecture and design writer Allison Arieff uses that newspaper’s Opinionator blog as a forum to dig deeply into exactly how we should be re-conceptualizing work spaces. In her post, Arieff draws a parallel between those who suggest cosmetic solutions to environmental problems and those whose approach to redesigning our offices only goes skin deep:

In the same way that bamboo floors, hybrid SUVs and eco-couture haven’t done much to curb carbon emissions, designing (and buying) more stuff for offices, no matter how sleek or sustainable it is, likely won’t help reset the culture of work.

Rather than add oriental rugs and comfier chairs to our offices, Arieff suggests we consider redesigning not just the spaces where we work but the whole concept of work itself. There are more fundamental problems to solve than the aesthetic, she contends:

I’m willing to bet that almost any office worker would happily swap Webcam lighting that won’t make you look, when you’re on Skype, like you’ve “been out partying all night” (as Steelcase’s head of design explained in Fast Company), for solutions to more pressing work issues like, I don’t know, burnout or fear of losing health coverage.

So what sort of wholesale redesign of our fundamental conceptions of work does she have in mind? Arieff runs through a slew of design professionals who are wrestling with this knotty problem and coming up with everything from “a co-op babysitting arrangement among working parents in the respective workplace to cover for one another throughout the day” to community-building events at co-working spaces.

The post is lengthy, full of questions guaranteed to get you thinking (Examples: What careers are viable and how should we train people for them? Might companies and their employees be able to re-envision what loyalty looks like in an era where the average time spent in a job is hovering in the range of one to four years?) and is well worth a read in full.

Is redesigning our office spaces just moving around deck chairs on the Titanic?

Image courtesy of Flickr use Ste3ve

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview
• Strategic Implications of the Microsoft/Skype Deal
• The Future of Workplaces

Back in 1975, BusinessWeek published “an in-depth analysis of how word processing will reshape the corporate office.” In the article, industry experts were divided over whether they would be able “to call up documents” from their files on-screen and connect electronic terminals to each other or if this vision of the future was, in fact, “scare talk.” One of the biggest concerns raised was how word processing would change the traditional secretary-executive relationship.

I think it’s safe to say that the predictions in the article put forward by George E. Pake , then head of Xerox Corp.’s Palo Alto Research Center, were largely correct. According to Pake, in 1995, there would be a TV-display terminal with a keyboard sitting at his desk and he’d be “able to call up documents from my files on the screen, or by pressing a button … I can get my mail or any messages. I don’t know how much hard copy [printed paper] I’ll want in this world.”

I have it on good authority from Jonathan Howell, Huddle’s CTO, that in the 1990s, everything was networked, all internal communication was done via email on a mainframe and desktop printers (with “desktop” referring to ubiquity rather than size) were commonplace. However, Jonathan was working for IBM in the 90s; what was it like for the rest of the workforce? You could indeed access your files with a click of a button on your computer. Networked desktop PCs were becoming increasingly widespread in offices worldwide, and in August 1995, Microsoft launched its much-anticipated Windows 95. The World Wide Web started to take shape, and Yahoo became one of the largest directories for web content. In short, advances in technology during the 1990s resulted in the “revolution in the office” that Pake predicted. Laptop computers were also becoming hot sellers, so the idea of a mobile workforce, while still a long way off, was starting to develop.

However, Pake’s vision of a world without “hard copy” remains a fantasy. In spite of the increasing popularity of email and the web, the rise of devices such as the iPad and enterprise content management tools, such as Huddle and SharePoint, the paperless office is still out of reach. The desktop printers that became a familiar sight in the office in the ’90s continue to be the worker’s trusty companion. According to the WWF, the average U.S. office worker goes through 10,000 sheets of copy paper per year. People still want to have physical documentation. Whether it’s business records, receipts or utility bills, people continue to feel they need to store paperwork in a safe, physical place for future reference. To drive widespread adoption of new technologies, a cultural shift and change in habits needs to take place. Just as the introduction of word processing and automation to the 1990s office changed the traditional secretary-executive relationship (or “office wife” bond), enterprise content management and collaboration technologies are disrupting the way people work today. Transforming working practices takes time.

In 1987, little more than 10 years after BusinessWeek’s predictions article was published, Apple Computer created a video envisioning how people would use technology to work in the 21st century:

The touchscreen “Knowledge Navigator” tablet device shown in the video could easily pass for an early prototype of Apple’s iPad, while the University Research Network accessed for information on deforestation in the Amazon rainforest looks suspiciously like the web. We are now accustomed to seeing touchscreen devices — according to market research firm iSuppli, worldwide production of touchscreen modules for use in computers is set to hit 117.9 million units in 2014 — but in 1987, mainstream adoption of such devices was still years away.

Another application shown is video conferencing: The professor is seen happily conversing with his colleague on-screen. Now, of course, video conferencing is part of most workers’ everyday lives, whether they are based at home or in an office: another hit for Apple’s vision of the future. While I doubt avatars with bow ties fielding calls and managing diaries will take off (unless Clippy 2.0 is overdue?), but virtual customer service assistants are now a familiar sight: Jenn at Alaska Airlines and Lucy at O2, for example. It may be a while before speech recognition is as seamless as that shown in the video; it is still a familiar (albeit often frustrating) technology.

The paperless office and a diary-managing avatar may not be a reality just yet, but many of the predictions made decades ago aren’t too far off the mark. However, there were some visions of the office of the future that just didn’t come to fruition, such as the short-lived Microsoft at Work (MAW). On June 9, 1993, Bill Gates launched MAW, which was supposed to connect common business machinery, like fax machines and photocopiers, with a communications protocol allowing control and status information to be shared with computers running Windows. It never got off the ground, and by 1995, it had disappeared from view.

Andy McLoughlin, co-founder and EVP Strategy at Huddle, can be reached on Twitter @Bandrew.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview
• Putting Big Data to Work: Opportunities for Enterprises
• The Battle for Unified Communications Heats Up

My corner office (so called because it’s literally occupying the corner of my living room) is consistently a tangle of wires, gadgets and gear, but that’s about the only consistent thing about it. It’s also always a work-in-progress, with things constantly being moved around and re-arranged in an attempt to find the configuration most conducive to work.

One of the reasons I spend a lot of time on it is that it’s a good way to procrastinate and avoid the important work I should be doing. But another reason is that the place where I spend the better part of my day had better be comfortable and supremely usable in order to improve both the quality of my work and of my life overall.

I’ve generally used a multi-monitor setup, though I’ve also advocated going down to a single screen to help you focus in the past. Right now, I think I’ve struck a good balance. I still use three screens (though I’d use only two or one if I had a large screen as my main display, like the one of the new 27-inch iMacs), but I rarely look at more than two. I also have my iPad at my workstation, operating solely as a standalone IM client. It resides on my left, outside of my field of view. That way, I can hear when a message comes in and note it, but there’s no visual imperative drawing my attention away from the task at hand.

I have a comfortable, ergonomic office chair, but it shares its duties with a large inflatable exercise ball that I use intermittently for the health of my back. The exercise ball also helps keep me focused and on-task, I’ve found, since I’m basically locked into position when I’m using it, and can’t really slouch or swivel around to check out what’s on TV, for instance. If you’re a web worker who spends hours at a time unbroken in front of the computer, I highly recommend one.

For work that requires real focus, I use a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. If my work urgent as well as important, then I’ll just use them without being connected to an audio source. Silence is golden, and for me, it’s also productive. I think I work faster when it’s quiet because it makes me want to hurry up and move on to another task, one that hopefully involves auditory input.

I used to have a bad habit of catching up with TV shows sporadically during the work day. I still do this, sneaking a show here or there, but now I do it in my work space, often while I’m doing something work-related but that doesn’t require  much attention at the same time. I’ll watch shows on the monitor on the right of my workspace, and do work on the main screen of my iMac. It saves me time because watching a show doesn’t become an event that I have to get up for, attend to, and get back to work from. It happens inline with my productive activities.

My space has taken shape through many years of trial and error, and it works because I know what is and isn’t going to distract me from getting things done. I’ve taken out things like a second computer, which I thought would speed things along but which just ended up being a Facebook/online shopping machine. But I’ve also come back to things like multiple monitors, because working between two apps is just so much easier that way.

To suss out the best configuration of your own workstation, you have to pay attention to the same kinds of things. And remember, nothing that you change can’t be undone, so don’t be afraid to go ahead and try whatever feels right, but always keep tabs on what you’ve done and how it’s affected your performance, or you’ll just find yourself wholly lost in the realm of procrastination.

What do you find productive about your current work space? Can you identify anything that’s definitely a distraction, and if so, can you change it?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
• By The Numbers: Running a Coworking Space

According to Martin, a manspace is a custom-built hangout where a man can work, play and generally be himself. In his brief talk, he describes how he built a home office at the bottom of his garden for around $3,000, as well as name-checks Superman, Batman, Elvis and Hemingway as legendary owners of manspaces.

Surprisingly, in investigating over 50 contemporary manspacers, Martin discovers that manspaces are largely about articulating a passion — everything from Japanese tearooms to full-size boxing rings — concluding that each space was intricately designed to reflect its owner.

In a related piece, The New York Times recently ran a fascinating photo slideshow on the “Decline and Fall of the Bachelor Pad,” noting that the recession has curtailed the more excessive tendencies of the manspace.

One industrious architect has purchased a 900-square-foot loft space, which he’s refitted into a live/work space, where private “pod” bedrooms sit alongside large shared workspaces in a kind of “coworking plus” configuration.

Though I divide my time between coworking and working from home, I’m fascinated by the home working environments of web workers. My own workspace at home is a spartan $100 IKEA table and a Macbook, but I know others with much more elaborately personalized spaces.

Of course, “manspace” is an unnecessarily gender-biased term. I don’t believe there’s any fundamental difference here in the underlying motivations of women or men.

I would love to run a series of posts on people’s various home working environments and, more importantly, how they’ve gone about personalizing and customizing them to reflect their passions. Leave your stories and thoughts in the comments, and I’ll see if I can follow up with some more in-depth posts.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: Monetizing Digital Content
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era

According to a study from the Light Right Consortium, “People who are more satisfied with their lighting rate the space as more attractive, are happier, and are more comfortable and satisfied with their environment and work.” As far as home office improvements go, investing your time on proper lighting seems like it’s worth it.

Here are some pointers to get started on a well-lit office:

Increase amounts of natural light. The best way to light a home office is through natural light, not only because it’s brighter and more even than artificial lighting, but also because it’s free. I’m glad that my home office seems to do well in this area, because one wall is a glass sliding door to an open veranda, while another wall has a large window.

If you don’t have the benefit of natural light in your office, it seems like common sense to compensate for it by using bulbs that replicate daylight (full-spectrum bulbs). But research shows that such bulbs only make a difference if you’re performing tasks that require fine discrimination of color (if you do print design work, for example).

Opt for indirect lighting. Don’t imitate corporate cubicle farms by installing direct, parabolic lighting. Professors at Cornell University conducted a study (pictures here) that showed the negative effects of these lights in an office. These lights were bothersome and made the subjects’ eyes tire and lose focus more easily. Apparently, direct parabolic lights also lessens productivity (as self-reported by employees). For the effect on your eyes alone, it’s better to opt for lensed indirect lighting for your ceiling fixtures.

Plan your furniture layout well. The first thing you have to consider when rearranging furniture is preventing reflected glare on your monitor.

I mentioned above that I have a lot of natural light flowing into my office. This presents a disadvantage, too, because too much direct natural light produces reflected glare on the screen. This lessens my options for monitor placement. My solution to this is to place translucent blinds on the windows to diffuse the sunlight a bit.

Here are other things you need to consider for your layout:

• If you have other glossy or shiny surfaces in the office, make sure that any reflected glare they have is out of your line of sight.
• Use large furniture such as shelves and dividers to maximize or block bright sources of light, depending on your needs.
• For offices that are openly connected to other rooms (no wall), include the lighting in the other room in your plans since it affects the lighting quality in your office.
• Paint your walls in bright colors. Just make sure that they’re not too bright or glossy, producing glare.

Properly space your light fixtures. When planning your fixtures, remember that your entire office should be uniformly lit. Watch out for areas that might be too dark or too bright. Avoid placing fixtures within your usual line of sight, and don’t install them within three inches of a wall (they’ll create sharp areas of shadow and light).

Have as much control as you can. If you can afford it, install dimmers and other methods to control brightness. When used properly, these devices can conserve energy and allow you to adjust your lighting as natural light changes throughout the day. Also, if you’ll be using desk lamps, make sure that you can adjust them on three planes.

Although improving lighting quality in the home office sounds like a lot of work, it’s much better than having a building’s existing lights forced on you. I hope the points I’ve raised above have been — pardon the pun — enlightening.

How well did you plan for the lighting in your home office? What effect does it have on your work?

Image by CraigPJ from sxc.hu

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

I shouldn’t have been surprised — I’d told her earlier in the week that we might become more productive if we work near each other. At that time it was merely a suggestion. I didn’t think that one day I would just wake up and find it a reality.

“Oh well, there’s nothing wrong with that,” I thought to myself. It’s not like we didn’t discuss it. What’s the worst that could happen? In fact, I believed we were going to be more motivated and productive.

A few days later, I realized that every benefit of coworking with my partner came paired with a disadvantage.

Inspiration vs. Distraction

As Darrell suggested in a previous post, you should pick a coworking partner that you respect and admire. I knew I could learn from my partner’s work ethic and her ability to make connections. I find her inspiring, but having her around is distracting too. Every time she moved or made a sound, I would shoot involuntary glances to her side of the room. To be fair, she told me that although she’s motivated by my passion for work she got annoyed at how loud I type.

This meant that we needed some physical barriers so that we could block out distracting movements and sounds. At the same time, we didn’t want to completely separate our workspaces. Our solution was to keep our desks six feet apart, rather than side-by-side, and place a small shelf of books in between. From where I’m sitting I can see her monitor, keyboard and hands without being distracted with the other movements she makes. Also, she can barely hear me type.

Common Ground vs. Conflicts

Having similar goals and habits can work for you, but there will always be  conflict no matter how compatible you think you are. For example, we agree on the color of the walls (orange), the position of the furniture and having a small garden behind the sliding door. Things we disagree on: everything else.

The workaround to this issue is to know your priorities as a team and as individuals. Do you need a completely silent work environment or can you adjust to soft ambient music? Is your need for a large shelf as important as her need for more leg room? There will always be compromises. Knowing your priorities can identify the compromises that will least affect you.

If you must argue, pick your battles well. An argument over who makes the coffee is not as important as a constructive discussion on how the other person’s habits interfere with your work.

Collaboration vs. Independence

It’s hard to create privacy when you’re working in one room. This can be a good thing, since you can help each other out of time sinks as well as share ideas. Too much collaboration, on the other hand, can be suffocating.

Facilitating collaboration was easy. The whiteboard in the office allowed us to write our to-do lists for the day and the rest of the week. If I need help with something, I just write it on the box labeled “Requests.” She then responds in a way that was most convenient for both of us whether it’s through email, a conversation, or Twitter.

Even then, we’d often think of a question that needed a quick reply. Asking out loud worked at first, but during peak productive moments we’d rather work uninterrupted. How would she know if it was okay to disturb me (and vice versa)?

Here’s the solution we came up with: a simple “DND” under my name in the whiteboard shows that I can’t be bothered until the “DND” has come off. The same goes for her. Now, it’s almost a reflex to look at the whiteboard and check for the “DND” before I speak.

Coworking with my partner was much harder than I expected. The good news is that with continued effort, we’re slowly getting to the point where the arrangement is making us stronger — both as a couple and as teleworkers.

Have you ever tried sharing a home office with your spouse or partner? What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

Image by nyuszika from sxc.hu

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

I’ll admit, I haven’t gone completely paperless (is it even possible?), and while my clutter in no way compares to what I used to accumulate in previous (non-web) jobs, it still gets in the way at times and needs to be tamed.

Here are a few tricks I use to keep it in check.

1. Keep flat surfaces clear as much as possible.

Desktops, tabletops, filing cabinet tops, and every other flat surface in your workspace should be kept completely clear — no stacks of paper, no files, nothing. Once daily, clear every flat surface in your office. Not only will it keep you from getting frustrated by not having a single surface to set something on, it will also help you stay on top of your work (you know, all those buried to-dos and sticky notes).

2. Do “quick sweeps” regularly.

Give yourself 10 minutes (set a timer, if necessary) and do a quick sweep a few times per day. Put away stray pens, notes, supplies, empty cups, trash, and anything else that has managed to get out of place.

3. Empty your inboxes.

Email, feed readers, to-do lists — they’re like breeding grounds for clutter, and they pile up quickly. At least once a day, clear the decks. Work to completely empty your inboxes so that you don’t get behind and start feeling overwhelmed.

4. Every two hours, set aside twenty minutes for two-minute tasks.

Find those tasks that can be done in two minutes or less — quick email responses, checking your voice mail messages, filing, straightening your desk, running through your to-do list, etc. — and power through them every two hours. Over an eight-hour day, you could get thirty two-minute tasks done this way!

5. Clear your computer screen.

Start work in the morning and before long, you have nine open tabs, and you’re only using two of them. When you stop to do your two-minute tasks or empty your inboxes, go ahead and clear your desktop. It will keep you from getting distracted and keep your computer from slowing down. (Tip: If you need to remember to do something with one or more of the open tabs, send an email to yourself with the subject line, “To Do Today.” Then you can clear your mind from worrying about forgetting something and focus on the task at hand.)

While it’s fairly easy to keep my office (somewhat) organized these days, I still have to take the time to do these few housekeeping tasks. They only take a few minutes, but they save me a lot of frustration and improve productivity.

What quick tips do you have for staying clutter-free? Share your ideas to keep things straight.

Image from Flickr by Matthew Simantov

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

This is especially good news for web workers who have been longing for an access-anywhere version of the Office suite, many of whom have been struggling with hybrid Office/Google Docs solutions.

However, the bad news is that Office 2010 and Office Web won’t be available until the first half of next year, so unless you have access to the Technical Preview you’re going to have to wait a long time to try it out. Microsoft has hinted that a wider beta test of Office Web could be made available later this year, but that still seems like a painfully long wait in today’s “release early, iterate often” world of web apps. In the meantime, I think it’s quite likely that we’ll see some considerable improvements to Google Apps.

What do you think of this announcement? Can you wait until early next year for Office Web?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

While just acquiring and setting up new gear is cause enough for celebration, better still is getting great deals on new work-related stuff. For instance, re-purposing an old SLR camera bag as the perfect clandestine portable HDD/DVD-RW/cable tote, or having Best Buy match the deep discount a much smaller competitor is offering on a 16GB SDHC card.

Gear-swapping via Craigslist or with friends and colleagues is another favorite pastime of mine. Through straight-up trades, I acquired my first film SLR camera (a Canon Rebel that’s still in great shape), a flatbed scanner with a special film/slide slot in the lid for archiving my parents’ extensive collection, and a Palm T|X that for a long time served as my go-to mobile device.

I’m curious about the hardware-sourcing habits of other similarly positioned freelancers. Do folks normally buy new, as might be expected from those who largely write about the cutting edge of remote working trends? Or is the preferred method to look for deals on gently used or refurbished goods in order to keep costs down and profit margins high? Personally, I find my own gear strategy to be a blend of both, though as a general rule it tends to lean strongly towards the new-and-shiny end of the spectrum — an approach much noted and frowned upon by my significant other.

Any and all tips, tricks, and strategies you have to share would be greatly appreciated, and maybe we can all save a few bucks in the process! So my question for you is, how do you manage your hardware/home office/tools and supplies acquisition process?

Image by SlipStreamJC from flickr

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Not all teleworkers are lucky enough to have a large house. This means that designated office space will be limited. In fact, many teleworkers I know work from a partitioned corner of their kitchen or living room. If you’re in a similar situation, planning your home office can be a challenge. What can you do to have an efficient workspace in a small area?

Spend time planning your space. It’s best to make a visual plan so that each square foot is accounted for. Doing this saves more time and effort over moving furniture around on the spot.

Avoid large furniture. The smaller the space you have to work with, the leaner your furniture should be. I made the mistake of buying a large drafting table with a lightbox. It takes up half the room, but I only use a third of its surface. A more practical choice would’ve been a smaller desk and a separate lightbox that I can tuck away when I’m not using it. At least the table is foldable, so I can rest it against the wall when I need more floor space.

Which brings me to the next point — have folding or stacking furniture, if you can. This is especially important for pieces you don’t use often, such as extra chairs or tables. I’m not saying that you have to go out and buy new furniture. Just be selective about which existing pieces go into your office.

Go multifunctional. As much as possible, use multifunctional furniture. For example, a cabinet of the right height can also be used as a standing workstation. You can also have a small bench, ottoman, or side table with storage compartments. If you’re using a laptop, a cabinet with a foldout desk can be a good choice as your work desk if the height and size is comfortable enough for you.

One of the things I did was to modify an old computer chair so that it can serve as a stool when a visitor needs to look at the computer with me, and also function as an ottoman when I recline my own chair to relax.

Take advantage of vertical space. For extra storage space, install overhead shelves in your office. This allows you to increase the functional surface area that you can work with. You can make these shelves easier to reach by having a small stepladder nearby.

Purge ruthlessly. I used to keep the boxes that came with new software and equipment. By storing these boxes, I was essentially storing air. When I eventually recycled the boxes, I found myself with almost a full cabinet of free space. In case you’ll need some boxes in the future, don’t store them as they are. Instead, fold them up so that you can pile several boxes neatly in a cabinet or under a bed.

Here’s another thing that eats up office space: old or broken computer peripherals and parts. If some of them are still working, donate or sell them. If not, throw them away or recycle them.

Look for inspiration. Browse the web for examples of small rooms and see what makes them work. Here are some sites that can help:

• Small Space Style
• HGTV has a small space section
• Inspiring workplaces Flickr Pool
• Shedworking — Technically, this blog is about using sheds as living or working space. Many of the sheds are small, so they might give you some ideas.

Having a small home office shouldn’t be a big disadvantage if you know how to work around it. with some careful planning and creativity, the worth of your small office won’t be measured in square feet.

Do you have a small home office? How do you work around space constraints?

Image by jadey919 from sxc.hu

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

But what happens when you put someone else in the picture? What if, right next to the potted palm in your home office, your partner or work-from-home housemate materialized?

With more and more people working remotely at least some of the time, this is a very real question that many of us face. What should you consider if you’re about to embark on a multi-person home workplace?

There are definitely pros as well as cons. First up, let’s look at the cons. These are the main sticking points I’ve encountered when working from home with another in close proximity.

Personal Space

I’m not just talking about physical space here. There’s also the question of headspace. If you’re close to the person you live with, and you spend any amount of time together, then you may find working in the same physical space a bit intense. You may even find the realities of your both being around the house all day causes friction. You may start to feel like you don’t get a minute to yourself, or find yourself wondering why they don’t talk to you more during the day!

Being clear about your desires and expectations, and keeping your home office partner informed if something’s bugging you. Don’t wait until you reach breaking point if you find something’s not working. Talk about how things are going on a regular basis, and try to make sure you’re both prepared to try new approaches and be flexible.

Facilities

Working in the same office might be cool…until you’re both having telephone conversations at the same time, and can’t hear yourselves think. Or perhaps your home office colleague always has the printer tied up just when you need it. Perhaps they care a whole lot less than you do about office hygiene. Or perhaps they decry your taste in music and find golden silence more conducive to productivity.

“It’s OK,” you may be thinking. “We have enough space here to create separate offices.” Great! Just keep in mind that things like lighting, climate control, and doubling up on fit-outs for two offices won’t just cost you more initially, they may well cost you a lot to run on an ongoing basis.

Schedules

If you and your home office sharer have different working hours, you may find you get more done, or that you end up seeing less of each other in your “downtime.” Making the shift to working remotely will change most peoples’ schedules, since there’s no need to commute, so it’s likely that the new remote worker’s time before and after work will be spent differently than it is now. On the other hand, that person may fall into the trap of doing more hours, which again may reduce the time you spend together.

There are other considerations, too. If one expects the other to be home all day, then gets home to find themselves unexpectedly responsible for dinner or picking up the kids, that they’ve missed the plumber’s service call, or are just plain locked out, fireworks may ensue.

To some degree, the answers to these questions will depend on how much work you do from your home office and how often you’re out and about; how much space you have at home; the hours you both work; and how you arrange your out-of-work time. The solutions will undoubtedly lie in collaboration and communication, and in being flexible enough to help each other (and yourself!) find a productive way to work from home.

So, what are the highlights of sharing your home office? These are the main ones for me:

Inspiration and Motivation

Whether you want to talk about client management or get ideas for solving a problem with the cool new project you’re working on, having someone else around can really make a difference to your problem solving. As a sounding board, adviser, motivator and idea-generator, your in-home colleague can be very handy, whether they work in your industry or not.

Schedules

I know I just finished saying that schedules could be a problem, but of course having another person work from home may also make it easier to manage life. While you’re picking up the kids on your way home from a client meeting via the market, perhaps your work-at-home partner is making dinner or bringing in the washing. Such visions of domestic/work bliss sometimes seem as unlikely as a holiday on the moon, but they are possible with a little pre-planning.

Bonus: The fact that someone who was commuting now has more time in their days may also free up either or both parties to pursue additional interests outside work and home. Yes, it could be time to join the local basketball team/dance class like you’ve always wanted to!

Closeness

You may not want to get any closer to your housemate Dan who doesn’t believe that socks need washing (in which case you might want to make sure you have separate home offices), but in other cases you may hope — and find — that having both yourself and your other domestic half work from home brings you closer. Let’s face it: working solo from home can be an isolating and lonely experience, so you may well relish having someone else working from your home office.

Perhaps you’ll gain a new understanding of your home office colleague and appreciation for their work and they way they operate. You may learn from their mistakes as well as their good habits. You might benefit from their contacts and revel in the teamwork that comes from supporting each other through your busy work days. And you might look forward to those days when you actually get to eat lunch together away from your computers.

That’s my take on dual-party home office politics. But what are your tips for making a success of the two-person home office?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

So is Feng Office worth the price of admission? To some extent, that will always depend on your available budget, but here are my impressions.

Interface

I’m partial to the Feng Office interface, because it’s clean, simple, and works well on any platform that I’ve tried thus far (Windows and Mac, IE, Chrome and Firefox). It also reminds me of Office 2007′s look, which is great for at least visually integrating with my existing workflow, which involves using Office in a virtual machine via VMware Fusion.

The interface uses a tabbed control screen, without the need for continual page refreshes whenever you update, which means response time is super snappy. Menus are dynamic and load without delay, and are organized as you would expect them to be, especially if you’re familiar with Office menus and command locations. The degree of polish on the interface alone shows me why Feng Office costs $10 per month when compared with some of the free options I’ve tested in the past.

Features

Feng Office packs most of the features you should require for most project management duties. In addition to basics like calendars, contacts and email, it also provides milestone and task management, and a built-in time-tracking function.

All of the above are well-implemented, although some users may actually find the similar interface design of all the functions more confusing than helpful, since it’s often not clear which function you’re using at any given time without looking at what tab is highlighted. I like the uniformity, though, since it gives each feature a sense of connectedness to the others and adds to the feeling that Feng Office is a holistic solution.

Notes, Links and Documents features also bring much to Feng Office’s overall value proposition, and each is well-executed. You can even create new Word docs and PowerPoint HTML documents and presentations directly from within Feng Office using its own built-in editors, both of which retain UI elements from Microsoft’s own suite. That means less time switching from browser to standalone apps, which adds up to better productivity.

Tags can also be applied to anything and everything in Feng Office, which really helps keep things organized. On the left-hand side of the screen, persistent menus allow you to change workspaces and filter by tags, so that you can drill down and find things quickly if you’re working on a larger project, or multiple projects with many team members.

Pricing

As mentioned, Feng Office offers no free option. You can try it out free for 30 days, which is what I did for the purpose of this review. After that though, if you like it, you’ll have to choose one of its five tiered plans to continue. Plans start at $10 per month for a single user account with a 300 MB storage limit, and range up to $179 per month for 40 users sharing 15 GB of space. The longer the term of your subscription, the larger the discount applied to that fee, up to a maximum of 10 percent. Both onsite (self hosted) and online (hosted by Feng Office) options are available, depending on your needs.

It isn’t free (normally a dealbreaker for me, given the number of free apps available), and it isn’t really cheap either, but it definitely is a very well put together piece of software. In fact, no free alternative I’ve come across offers quite the level of professional, bug-free service that Feng Office provides. It’ll probably ultimately depend on your project’s budget, but don’t pass up at least the free test run of this little gem.

Let us know your thoughts on Feng Office in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Here are a few things you can try:

Add a plant or two. It can be refreshing to see some green plants your office. They can provide the necessary contrast, especially if you too many gadgets lying around. Some particular types of plants, such as heartleaf philodendron and English ivy, can also improve the air quality in your office. Just make sure to place them near a window.

If you want to add more artistic flair to your office plants, you can use a terrarium instead. For inspiration, visit the terrarium pool at Flickr.

Have visual inspiration. I like having paintings, posters and other inspiring visuals in my office. These range from family photos to framed paintings from some artist friends. Having them around helps me regain my focus when I find that my eyes are randomly wandering around the room. If you don’t have the budget to buy art prints, you can always look for interesting images online and print them. The Dubberly Design Office has a wonderful concept map of the creative process, which you can download as a PDF file. Hugh MacLeod also has cartoons you can print out and use as “cube grenades.”

Evaluate your desk for ergonomics. Even a few inches can make a difference to your comfort. Ergotron.com has a handy workspace planner that allows you to find the right position for your workstation’s components.

Keep healthy snacks and drinks nearby. Many web workers I know love to keep a cup of tea or coffee at their desk. But instead of placing them on the same table as your computer, I suggest that you place them on a different table to prevent accidental spills.

I also find that planning healthy snacks beforehand and placing them in my office makes it easy for me to choose healthy food (such as fruits) compared to convenience foods I tend to find in the fridge or the kitchen. By making the healthier snacks easier to access, they’ll be the first thing I’ll reach for. It’s a good idea to keep a basket or tray of healthy snacks in your office.

Add a whiteboard. There are so many ways to use a whiteboard that I find it hard to imagine working without one. While I keep my daily task list on Google Calendar, the whiteboard gives me a quick overview of my commitments for the next three months.

Repaint your walls. The ambient color of your office can make a big difference to your working mood. Cool colors such as blue and green tend to be relaxing, while bright colors like orange and yellow are invigorating. Color psychology isn’t an exact science, so choose the paint color that reflects your working style.

Set up a relaxation corner. Sometimes my home office is the only quiet room in the house. Although I mostly do my work in this office, it also becomes my sanctuary when my housemates have people over. If you have a similar home environment, a small chair can be good for unwinding during your breaks.

Have you tried doing any of the above items? What other simple changes have you made to your home office?

Image by EdwinP from sxc.hu

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Once installed, Offisync adds a new toolbar to your Office apps. (Offisync works with Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations.)

The Offisync toolbar

First, you need to configure Offisync with your Google account details using the “Accounts” button. Offisync supports multiple accounts, so if you use both Google Docs and Google Apps, you can easily switch between them.

You can then use Google Docs as an online repository for your Office documents. Click on “Save As” in the Offisync toolbar and you get access to a file menu showing your Google Docs account. As well as being able to save files, you can add, rename and delete folders.

Once your document is saved, you can access it from any browser through Google Docs, or open it up again in Office. You can also use Offisync to edit your existing Google Docs files in Office.

One of  the best things about Google Docs is how easy it makes sharing your documents with others and collaborating on them. Offisync brings that power right inside Office. Click on “Collaborate” and you can choose to share your document with anyone else through Google Docs. If they also have Offisync isntalled, they’ll be able to work on the document in Office, too.

Offisync: A document in Office and Google Docs

Offisync’s not perfect, because Google Docs doesn’t have quite the same functionality as Office — it doesn’t support tracked changes and turns some objects into images, for example — but for most documents it works very well. The next version of Office will hopefully have cloud storage and collaboration functionality included, but until it’s released, Offisync is a great interim measure.

The Offisync beta is free to download and use, and works with Office 2003 and Office 2007 on XP, Vista and Windows 7. It also requires .NET Framework 3.5, so if you don’t have that already, it will be downloaded as part of the install. There’s a demo video available if you’d like to see it in action before trying it out.

Have you tried Offisync? What did you think?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks
• What Google’s Honeycomb Means for Apple and Microsoft
• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview