This Blog follows on from last week’s when we concluded that for many people WORKING FROM HOME SUCKS. WE now look in more detail how working from home can … Work.
In this article the words ‘Virtual Office’ are used in the broadest sense, and relates to people working from home …. or wherever, but linked to the business world through a Business Centre offering Virtual Office Solutions, such as a CBD address, phone answering and meeting room facilities to bring people together as the need arises.
When business calls for flexible work hours, virtual offices create an opportunity for people to work whenever they like from wherever they are.
Virtual Offices allow for reduced commute time, lower technology costs and lower overhead costs (with no lease to pay), which leads to increased productivity, lower overall costs and hence increased profitability.
Benefits for Everyone
Here are seven ways your employees, and your business, can benefit from a virtual office:
1. No commute time.
We’ve found the two or three hours every day that used to be spent getting ready for work and traveling to the office can now be spent as productive time.
2. Employees are easily more active.
Researchers at University of Sydney’s School of Public Health in Australia released a study that found sitting at your desk for more than 11 hours a day increased your risk of death in the next three years by more than 40 percent, regardless of other activity. Interestingly, people working with a virtual office concept naturally move around more as they’re not chained to a desk at an office every day.
3. Flexibility means using less leave days.
Want to have “donuts with dad” in your child’s school class? It’s not a big deal because you can make up the time later. Prefer to work out at lunchtime? No problem—you have a shower in your office now. With flexibility at work the urgent need for a leave day is eliminated.
4. Access to worldwide talent.
Gain a customer in Hong Kong and need someone to be there once a week? That’s no problem if you have a virtual office. Not being tied to just one location means a business can acquire a world-wide presence via a virtual network. Let technology be your slave, rather than the other way around.
5. Less overhead.
There’s no office lease, no utility payments, no furniture and none of the associated costs that come with having a brick-and-mortar space. All that savings can not only be passed along to clients, or retained as extra profit. There is no limit to the speed that you can grow..
6. Save money on technology.
While BYOT (bring your own technology) started in the school system, it’s quickly made its way into the business world. By working remotely, employees can have the technology they prefer, and they’re responsible for upgrading it when it’s convenient for them. While there are a few cyber risk concerns with not having company-provided technology, that’s fairly easy to manage with a password tool, monitoring and employee training.
7. Productivity increases.
Because you go from monitoring when people arrive to work and when they leave to establishing specific goals, you’ll see an increase in productivity almost immediately. If employees meet or exceed their goals, they keep their jobs. If they don’t, you’ll quickly see that—and be able to weed them out—because no one is around to save them. Letting employees work remotely should also decrease turnover because people are generally happier to be able to do their jobs and not have to deal with the drama that comes along with putting a bunch of people in an office together.
While the virtual office doesn’t work for every business—many companies need people together in one location to get work accomplished—in those businesses where technology truly allows you to work from anywhere, a virtual office offers a strong alternative to a traditional office environment.
Don Will is the MD of Wilkin Group, which has a number of Business Centres which have offered Virtual Office Solutions for over a decade, and hence understands the changing nature of workspaces.
Wilkin Group can be contacted at info@wilkingroup.com.au or +618 7071 7071.