Making The Most Of Your Virtual Office

The concept and the use of virtual offices and working remotely was introduced to us not so long ago. In the case of new ideas, it takes time for the general people to fully accept and support a concept. From an owner's perspective, having zero costs for office space and avoiding operating expenses can be fascinating. While as an employee, it might feel like working from home is a dream come true!

If you are working remotely, having an effective and sustainable virtual office requires proper strategies and communications. Today, we'd like to discuss some of the common pitfalls that a virtual office might face and the methods used to counter them. Let's explore how you can make the best of your virtual office.

Security of work:

Keeping work content secure is a part of your job, no matter if you're an employee or a business owner. When you have an office space, a working machine provided by the office, and other colleagues working with you, that part is normally taken care of without requiring your attention.

However, if you happen to be someone working for a virtual office, keeping your machine secure against threats is entirely up to you. This includes keeping it virus-protected, its software up to date, and its data secured.

Your virtual office involves a lot of online work. Losing or sharing a client's data is a big problem. Make sure all members of your team understand and are trained well in regard to data security and can protect their workspace.

Ensuring Efficiency:

Ensuring maximum efficiency from the members of a virtual team can be a little tough. If you're targeting maximum efficiency, make sure to keep this in mind; disaster will not wait for a convenient time to strike. Ideally, you should have someone available at all times in case of emergencies, but at the least, you should have a system built up through which you can communicate and stay connected. Even though you're working remotely, staff should have defined 'office hours' in which they will be available.

It would be best if you always tried to assign more than one person to an important project. A project assigned to a single person might be delayed due to absence or other commitments on the part of that person. Ensure you have someone to back up the lead on a project during an emergency. It helps to go cloud-based as much as possible. This way, an employee's work is available even if he's not present.

Handling Customers:

Let's admit it; many potential customers still expect that a successful company must have a physical office. Though the scenario is changing gradually, you have to be proactive in letting investors and customers know that it's your work which matters - with or without a decorated, physical office.

Never lie to them; instead, be clear about the virtual nature of your business, and explain how it maximises productivity, increases flexibility & saves money. Also, to keep your business open 24/7, you can hire a telephone answering service for your after-hour calls.

Communication Problems:

Humans are social beings. With a virtual working space, you will always have the risk of feeling isolated or experiencing burnout. Since employees working remotely don't engage in face-to-face, miscommunication and misunderstandings can arise - to the detriment of the office. To address this problem, try creating an internal chat system.

Through this chat system, employees can remain in contact with each other. There are several software options that can serve this purpose. Slack is one of them. It is a collaboration tool built with the office environment in mind.

Clever use of software:

There are some other very helpful software options aside from Slack, which is built to support these types of initiatives. There is Trello as well as Zenkit, excellent project management software that makes personal and professional task management much easier.

There is Jira Software, an agile project management tool. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Skype are awesome products for maintaining verbal communication. There are plenty more, and you just need to make the best use of them.

These are the most common drawbacks of having a virtual office. Though they can be challenging to address, one thing is for sure; these problems are solvable. Limiting the pitfalls of a virtual office can also increase its benefits.