newWorkPlaces

What makes a "best on the road" newworkplace?

If you read the Los Gatos Starbucks review and my recent WorkLog entry
entitled "A Room with a View" you will start to understand my personal
preferences for what makes up my "best on the road"
newworkplace. Subjectiveness aside, there are many attributes that
most people need and want in a good workplace while traveling.

I have narrowed what started as a long list down to ten most important
categories and applied them specifically to publicly accessible
environments. Each location may have additional attributes that make
them good, or bad, places outside their originally intended purpose. For
instance, a coffee house with the best coffee does not necessarily rate it
as a 'best' destination.

Selecting ten general characteristics was a bit of a struggle. I really have
twenty general categories with a scoring system totaling one hundred.
This level of detail is really only important to someone who wants
to actually create a good remote work environment. I tried to cut
the ratings down, but couldn't bring myself to get rid of items like
cleanliness and good service, both which contribute, albeit subliminally, to
the overall impression of a place.

Admittedly, when choosing a place to go, I have one first requirement,
that it be a moderately noisy, active environment. I am a
community worker. The second an easily accessible electrical outlet.
Hopefully, in the future when small fuel cells or some such power source
is invented, this will no longer be a problem.

The nextrgrouping for me comes free WiFi, plenty of daylight, good tea
(iced or hot depending on the time of the year), great music and a sense
of community, mostly but not always in that order. Lastly, comes parking
access, decor, furniture, office services, etc. Things I have grudgingly
come to accept as typically a bad given, making the inclusion of these
items a lobbying effort for better versions in workplaces of the future.

These attributes are constructs for me individual productivity.
Yours may be a different mix of priorities. But thirty years of creating
work environments, the last decade and a half specifically directed
towards off-site places and mobility have confirmed that the iems on the
list, in what ever personal order, are the components that create a
standard of excellence of newworkplaces.

Let it not go unnoticed that those things that are last or least important on
the list are those that are provided by most companies. Conversely,
except for electricity, the most important factors that contribute to a good
work environment are rarely supplied in a corporate environment. So far
I have not found any workplace that rated a 50 or five +'s. The criteria is
steep but far from impossible - the rewards innumerable.