How to make a Virtual Office work?

Tough times call for tough decisions. Currently, the economic scenario is not the best when it comes to seeking investments for your start-up. Investor sentiment is at an all- time low and finding new business isn’t an easy task either. In such times, it is best to keep your start-up costs to a bare minimum.

For an organization, the biggest expenditure is an office. Whether you buy a space or lease it, either way, you will be spending a lot on it. To keep such substantial costs to a minimum, businesses are increasingly exploring the option of virtual offices. As the name suggests, you don’t have an actual brick and mortar office. Rather, you have employees who work from wherever they wish to, which could be miles or even continents away from your actual place of business.

Such a model of working has picked up steam in the last couple of years or so. While some have succeeded with it, others have failed. In fact, the list of naysayers in this regard is substantially long than otherwise. But that’s because they haven’t put sufficient thought to the problem and come up with innovative problem solving methods.

If you can be creative and a business manager in this digital era, there is nothing better than having a virtual office, at least for start-ups. Here are some tips on how to make it work:

Come up with innovative policies

The biggest challenge with having a virtual workforce is keeping the employees motivated and serious about work. Often times, they can get carried away while at home and make light of the issues at hand. However, new problems ask for new solutions, and that’s what you have got to come up with. Come up with interesting policies that will keep them motivated while hampering their flexibility. For example, a pay per hour model could work really well in the case of virtual employees. It could save you from wasteful expenditure while giving them the freedom as well as the motivation to keep working on the task at hand.

Another trick could be having innovative incentives for increasing the productivity of your virtual workforce. Since they do not have any physical authority monitoring them, it is important to incentivize them the right way.

Regular meetings could help a great deal

A lack of teamwork is often what managers grouse about when it comes to a virtual office. But there are ways you could work around that issue. For example, organizing regular get-togethers could go a long way in developing the right level of camaraderie among your work from home employees. If you have groups of employees in different cities, you could always arrange meetings in each city once every month or whatever suits you. The idea is to give them the feeling of personal presence every now and then.

Give it a sense of realism

While the concept is definitely picking up, people are still uncomfortable with it. And that could hit your business, since clients may not be too confident of a business that has employees working from home. Thus, even if you have a virtual thing going on, it pays to get a real address for your business. That could easily be achieved by opting for a virtual executive suite. That ways, you get an address for your business without paying the full rent of the place and taking the burden of related expenditures.