Two years ago this month Choice moved to our spacious new offices in Liberty Square.  It’s fair to say, I think, that most of us are even now still marveling at our new physical surroundings.  After forty two years at Riverview Center, our LEED certified space at Liberty Square still seems like a breath of fresh air.  It’s not that the older space was so awful.  It wasn’t really.  Although it had some definite limitations, we had gotten used to them, and I don’t think too many Choice staff felt the operation would fall apart if we didn’t find a better workspace.

But a funny thing has happened.  Even as we have come to know and more fully appreciate Liberty Square, we have become less dependent on it.  How can that be?  As is so often the case these days, the answer is technology.  For thanks to the efforts of our small but dedicated IT staff, Lisa Gross and Robert Macaione, most Choice staff these days can access the office network via the Web.

To be sure, this is not a totally new development.  Choice actually had remote access well before the move to Liberty Square, but its full impact has taken a while to materialize.  Originally, we expected it to accomplish a couple of things.  First, we saw it as a convenience for Choice staff members who travel on a regular basis.  Second, we expected it to help staff members who worked at home from time to time to stay in better touch with their colleagues, reviewers, the home office, and vice versa.  In short, we saw it as a nice capability that would benefit selected staff.
Over time, however, remote access has become something more than that. 

Originally envisioned as a tool for staff members with special circumstances, it is now used by almost everyone.  And as new users quickly discover, it has a variety of side effects.  On the plus side, it makes for a more flexible workday.  Have a late afternoon appointment that requires leaving the office a little early?  No problem.  Log on to the network later that evening and finish up that important memo or answer that time-sensitive e-mail from the convenience of home.  More dramatically, remote access renders nearly irrelevant that most intractable of problems, the weather.  Are we having a blizzard, a hurricane?  No problem.  Let Mother Nature do her worst.  The Choice staff can and will carry on.

There is, of course, a down side to all this.  Suddenly, it is much easier to leave the office than it is to leave work.  When the only barrier separating you from work is logging on to your computer, or checking your office e-mail on your smart phone, “out of sight, out of mind” no longer applies.  Leaving work is no longer a physical activity, something you do at the end of the regular workday.  Rather, it’s a state of mind, one whose maintenance requires a continuous, conscious decision not to do something that is altogether too easy to do and potentially addictive.  But that’s progress for you, two steps forward, and one step …?—IER