I recently wrote about a friend of mine who hosts a successful, productive workshifting collective from his home office. I'm a veteran workshifter, and to be honest, I really like working all by my lonesome in my office or studio. So I was especially curious to see how and why a group of workshifters had created a cooperative work environment. Here's what I learned during a visit to the team's HQ.

The Team
There are currently five people on the workshifting team -- four are founding members who adhere to regular work schedules and one member is a PhD candidate who occasionally uses the space to work on her dissertation. The regulars work in IT support, software programming and Web communications. Most of the gang boasts a comfortable level of technical proficiency, which is an advantage for troubleshooting glitches as a group and never leaves any one person with the responsibility of being onsite tech support.

The Scene
The group works in the master suite on the second floor of my friend's house. Garfunkel, the housecat, perches in a handmade cat tree steeped in southern exposure. Boxes of tea collect dust atop a side table (this is a group of coffee drinkers, mostly), and a Britta pitcher sits in the center of the large, multi-person worktable. The walls are painted a fresh shade of Mediterranean blue, and a red exercise ball rests in the center of the room.

Origin
With one member of the workshifting collective hailing from the UK, I wanted to know how all these remote paths had crossed. It turns out that the founding members of the group all attended the same church and had been working off and on in pairs at local coffee shops. My friend proposed that they officially set up shop in his house and see how things took from there. They've kept to a regular schedule ever since.

Balance
Opening up your house - and your work rhythm - to other workshifters certainly comes with the risk of personal and professional disruptions. Even the closest of friends may have radically different expectations and behaviors in the workplace. It shouldn't come as any surprise that workshifters absolutely must have compatible working styles to successfully share professional space. And they also need solid, straightforward communication skills to be able to say, "Hey, I'm taking an important call. Can you please turn the music down?"

Food
These folks may work outside of the traditional office, but that doesn't mean that the traditional office food culture doesn't factor in. One regular told me, "This is where I consume the best food of the day." The gang tends to eat en masse -- either cooking in the house kitchen, eating out together or bringing carryout back to the workplace. On the day I visited the group, I arrived during a lunchtime break. Food that day had been delivered courtesy of a workshifter's husband.

Benefits
According to the group, a significant advantage of workshifting as a team is being able to leverage the synergy of working together to increase personal productivity. Another biggie is creating a strong sense of community and supportive social network. For the mother in the group, having a greater work/life balance is key. Across the board, creating a space that has fewer "home" distractions (like responding to a stack of dirty dishes) is a perk of working with other workshifters in an office environment. And being able to leave workspaces intact at the end of the day without packing up every last office artifact (as one must do at a coffee shop, for example) is a huge benefit.

Recommendations
If you're considering hosting or joining a workshifting team, keep in mind the following:

•    Individual job types have a direct impact on the team. For example, if a workshifter's job requires her to spend the majority of the workday on the phone, she may not be a good fit for a group of folks who spend the majority of their time concentrating on writing code or copy.

•    Work styles must mesh well, period. Music in the background could be a delight for some and a distraction for others.

•    Create a designated workspace that doesn't interrupt the flow of the underlying household. The flipside is that a messy house won't negatively impact a designated workspace.

•    Build a workshifting community that feeds your own productivity and reduces any feelings of isolation that you might have.

•    Be wary of (and quick to weed out) candidates who treat the occasional remote workday as a day off. This type of energy can easily erode the productivity of the entire group.

When I asked if the group had a disaster plan - we live in Minnesota, the land of 10,000 types of weather - my question was met with uproarious laughter. OK, no disaster plan. Obviously not a deal breaker. But it's clear that this team of consummate professionals has discovered and implemented a healthy, productive workshifting cooperative. I'll leave you with the wise words of one of the regulars: Workshifting allows you to fit "work into life, not life into work."

What do you think?