For many, the workplace is wherever they want it to be
Mar. 20—Traveling the world on a "career sabbatical," Michelle "Shelly" Saquet Temple was stuck in New Zealand during the pandemic when a fellow attorney offered her a job.
"You don't even have to come home," the Tilton woman recalled her soon-to-be boss saying.
Temple accepted the job as a patent attorney, returned home last year and occasionally uses her newfound job flexibility to work from the road in her Mercedes van, complete with a table, sink and bed.
And unlike most attorneys, she works on commission.
"Instead of the tail wagging the dog, it's more the dog wagging the tail," the fortysomething said this month before heading out for a trip to the nation's Southwest.
The pandemic has upended the future of work — and the workplace — for many people looking to escape the shackles and habits of previous generations.
"I think now more of the mainstream gets coworking and hybrid work models," said Jenna Baggs, manager of Spark Offices coworking space in Manchester's Millyard.
"The reality of the new world is that we realized that we need both" office and remote time, Baggs said. "We need that camaraderie and collaborative feel as well as some dedicated, focused time."
A national survey of 2,300 senior managers for staffing agency Robert Half showed that changes adopted during the heart of the pandemic aren't going away.
"Remote work is here to stay: 50% are offering remote options and will look for candidates outside of their office locations," the firm said in February.
Not everybody, however, is ready to forgo their office desk.
Jessica Grill worked in a Boston ad agency before the pandemic sent her home to work remotely in Bedford, where she grew up.
She looks forward to returning to an office setting again in Boston.
"To be frank, I'm one of the rare people. I prefer the office work," she said.
Grill, 26, likes the separation of work and home, remembering the days of doing homework in the library rather than at home.
More recently, she said, she valued Fridays at her dad's lake house along Squam Lake, doing work on her laptop from the deck before grabbing a beer or going out on a late-night boat ride.
Her employer is giving employees flexibility on where to work, making her happy "knowing I'll have that option for summer Fridays," she said.
Virtual law firm
So far this year, Keri Sicard has hired four attorneys at her online law firm, Virtual IP Law.
"I have still yet to meet any of the new hires in person," Sicard, 39, said by email. They hail from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado. None will be moving to New Hampshire, but Sicard, the law firm's owner, has no office for them anyway.
And she doesn't play by the old law firm rules that require attorneys to rack up a set number of billable hours a month. Instead, they work on commission.
"It's a little bit like a car dealership, I guess," Sicard said during an interview at the Spark coworking space, where she has a membership. "It's more commission-based, which has had a surprising response, like a surprisingly good response," from job applicants.
Sicard's firm uses the coworking firm for its Manchester address, but Sicard, a patent attorney, spends most of her time in an office on her Northfield property.
She had worked for a small firm in Concord until the pandemic slowed the flow of patent requests.
"So after six months of being unemployed, I said 'I have got to do something,' and so I started my own firm," Sicard said.
Baggs, who manages the coworking space, said entrepreneurs and people working at startups populated the coworking space initially.
"I think we've changed who our ideal client probably is due to the pandemic," Baggs said. "I think we have more corporations and teams than we would have had in the past."
The pandemic has meant more services available for Sicard to tap.
"I've been able to outsource a lot of things that most firms have to hire an accountant or they have to hire a bookkeeper," she said. "Someone to open their mail for them. I'm able to outsource all of that to third parties."
A virtual business has advantages over its physical counterparts.
"There's a lot in probably any business that can be outsourced. And when you're a brick-and-mortar structure, it's hard to bring people on because you need to give them an office, you need to pay for their space and all of that," Sicard said. "But when you're a virtual firm, you can kind of take on more part-time people just as needed, and as you scale and grow, you offload a lot of problems, too."
Her firm has seven attorneys, including her father and herself.
"We are planning a firm outing in July, so that everyone has an opportunity to meet with each other," Sicard said.
Road tripping
Temple started working for Sicard's firm in August, the same month she kicked off a nine-week trip that took her as far west as Glacier National Park in Montana.
She handled calls with clients virtually in her van for confidentiality reasons.
"Public libraries have become my best friend," Temple said, offering a better chair, space to spread out and room for her printer.
"I set my limit to what kind of money do I want to make," she said.
How much does she long to return to a conventional office?
"I don't miss it at all," she said. "None. Zero."
What's Working, a series exploring solutions for New Hampshire's workforce needs, is sponsored by the New Hampshire Solutions Journalism Lab at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications and is funded by Eversource, Fidelity Investments, the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the New Hampshire College & University Council, Northeast Delta Dental and the New Hampshire Coalition for Business and Education.
Contact reporter Michael Cousineau at mcousineau@unionleader.com. To read stories in the series, visit unionleader.com/whatsworking.
