Outsourced Logistics: Why We’re Better Together!

“Offices really do matter . . .”

Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of many books including Outliers and The Tipping Point and host of a wildly successful podcast, Revisionist History, has been catching a lot of slack lately for his negative comments about working from home. In a recent interview, Gladwell told Steven Bartlett, host of the podcast The Diary of a CEO, “It’s not in your best interest to work from home.” 

He explained, “If you’re just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work life you want to live?”

His comments have created a storm of backlash. And that’s not surprising. Remote work is all the rage these days. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when many companies were forced to send employees home (while other companies were forced to close their businesses), people have not only adjusted to remote work, they’ve found out they like it. They like the flexibility and the ease of the home office. It’s understandable.

Here at AM Transport, we worked from home for many months during the pandemic. The health and safety of our team members and their families, along with the folks in our community and society at large, was and is of utmost importance to us. But when the state of Illinois said we could go back to in-person work, we did. Because we knew all along that the energy we generate when we’re working together in our open concept office promotes creativity and collaboration.

We don’t have to weigh in on Gladwell’s assertion that “offices really do matter,” because we already know ours does. Here at AM Transport Services, we operate within a set of values that reverberate throughout everything we do, and one of those values is that we’re Better Together.

Why Better Together is better for you!

We’re in the same office in southern Illinois and this means it’s easy for us to collaborate. What does that collaboration look like?

When we have a technological issue, our tech department is in the same building. We’re not filling out tech tickets and waiting for someone in another time zone to figure out the problem.

We answer our own phones. We don’t have an answering service or a voicemail. That means, you’re not punching your way up a phone tree or waiting on hold while an operator finds the right person for your call. 

Even better, you’ll always have a main point of contact when you work with AMT, but in this office everyone is cross-trained and knowledgeable about everything going on. That means if your point of contact is out of the office, on vacation, or even out to lunch, one of her colleagues can help you out. This kind of redundancy means we don’t miss a beat.

When we get a last minute load, everyone pitches in. Another one of our core values is that we’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done. That’s a lot easier to do when we’re all in the same office, working side-by-side to make sure every single customer and every single carrier we’re working with is successful at the end of the day.

But this last one may be the most important for a variety of reasons. Simply put, our office is fun. Working together makes us happy. And research shows that happy people are more productive. And you don’t have to take my word for it–just Google it, and you’ll find numerous research studies that tout the benefits of a happy workforce. For example, Forbes reports that “happy employees are up to 20% more productive than unhappy employees.” 

Here at AMT, our open concept office promotes the collaboration that makes us so good at what we do. But that’s not all–if you come visit us, you’ll feel the energy and enjoy the eclectic music we’re playing all the time. You’ll love the back and forth banter and the genuine excitement that comes from working together, solving problems, and creating solutions. And that’s better for the manufacturers and carriers we work with day in and day out.

Is Malcolm Gladwell right?

Here at AM Transport, we work from the office because we believe that we’re better together. It’s not that we don’t have the capabilities for remote work–we’re flexible and know that sometimes sick children or bad weather can necessitate a work-from-home day. And when that happens we’re ready and able to adjust. But our office is where we do our best work. It’s where we come together as a team to ensure customer and carrier satisfaction.

So yeah, in our case, Malcolm Gladwell’s right.