Good day at the Hoffice

There used to be only two places a person could spend a day working: the home and the office. Working from home has been talked about to death, and the upsides and downsides are well noted. The same is even more true of the traditional nine-to-five office environment.

But is it possible to combine the best of both worlds? One Swedish startup, Hoffice (no prizes for guessing how they came up with the name), believes you can, by establishing a pop up office in a stranger’s home.

Immediately you can see some of the appeal. The decor is relaxing (and presumably tastefully Scandinavian), there is a work atmosphere without the distraction of co-workers (or vice-versa, the temptation of having nobody around), the commute could be a lot shorter, plus you get to meet a bunch of similarly-situated new people. The fact that it doesn’t cost you anything is just icing on the cake.

To host a Hoffice, all you need is: a house, a Hoffice Facebook page, and probably a large supply of coffee. To attend, a laptop (or whatever you work with), some lunch and an open mind. The free nature of the project is derived from Buddhist tenets of a ‘gift economy’ where people give effort and favours rather than money, and the idea was born when the founders, two friends, began to work together in each other’s houses.

The average day at a Hoffice is structured, with time set for breaks and explaining what you intend to work on that day. (The idea being that you’re more likely to do something you’ve told others you’ll do.) There’s also some mindfulness and meditation stuff attached to the idea, but the organisers stress that each Hoffice is unique to its members and can be run in whatever way people are comfortable with.

Hoff the peg

Sure, it’s not for everyone. Some people have such an ability to work anywhere that you can imagine them happily tapping away while their exploding train carriage plunges into a ravine. But most of us mortals learn to associate locations with work. It’s that handicap that can make working from home an issue — turning the one place you get away from work, into where you work, can be a recipe for procrastination and stress.

With Hoffice, you cherry-pick some of the most helpful parts of being in an office too. You get the motivation of others working around you, but rather than anxiety over being judged, it is a benign sort of pressure with no consequences attached. There might even be a collaborative nature to it, with potentially a diverse range of skills working side by side, which could allow participants to help one another on projects and problems.

Founder Christofer Franzen extolls the virtues: “Another way that the gift economy helps to create an amazing and supportive working environment in Hoffice is by members spontaneously giving their time, energy and skills to help each other. This creates a work environment that benefits us all.”

Currently Hoffices are popping up all over ever-progressive Scandinavia. So far their website only lists one in the UK – in Berwick-upon-Tweed – so you’re probably out of luck on that front — that is unless you want to start one. Not us though. We don’t even let guests sit on our sofa.

About the author

Jerome Langford

Jerome is a graduate in Philosophy from St Andrews, who alternately spends time writing about HR and staring wistfully out of windows, thinking about life’s bigger questions: Why are we here? How much lunch is too much lunch? What do you mean exactly by ‘final warning’?