There are various factors that you will need to take into account when deciding on a location for your business. You might discover that operating costs will be much more bearable in one place than they are in another.
You might also be drawn to a certain location due to the number of promising job candidates already based there. Moving into an office within proximity to a well-regarded university, for example, is likely to bode well. However, there’s another factor that you could be unjustly overlooking…
Why should you think about a location’s public transport links?
As Home Based Business Infonet Center notes, more and more people have decided to work from home — and the technology is certainly in place for them to be able to have that option in the first place. However, managing remote workers can be much easier said than done.
This could prove a particular problem if you are relatively inexperienced as a business leader. Therefore, you might prefer to rein in the remote-work options available to your employees, and encourage them to work with you in a standard office.
However, this strategy would throw up another problem: that of making sure the employees in question will be capable of getting to the office for the right time day in, day out.
“Won’t each of my workers have their own car?”
You can’t just assume that this will be the case. One article on the SmallBizLady website points out that “public transport is slowly becoming a preferred choice of commuting, and investing in a car continues to be an expensive lifestyle choice.”
Consequently, if you opt for an office in an area where public transport connections are scarce, your business could risk missing out on top talent.
Many jobseekers who might have been willing to consider working at your business could decide to instead work for a competing company located in an area better served by public transport.
Hence, before you choose to take up a particular office, it would be worthwhile for you to meticulously research the surrounding area to make sure public transport links there are plentiful.
While doing this research could appear to leave you with little time for looking into other aspects of an office, such as its onsite amenities, you could sidestep the issue by arranging for an office broker to do much of this legwork.
Let’s imagine that you have decided to look for an office in the popular London area of Mayfair, which is easy to reach through various London Underground routes. The broker Office Freedom could peruse a range of serviced offices in Mayfair available for you to consider.
Spare a thought for your target customers or clients, too
If you run the kind of business where people would be expected to turn up at its premises in person in order to buy from you, you naturally don’t want a situation where many members of your firm’s target audience are put off buying from it simply because of its location.
