How Virtual Offices Help Improve Remote Work

By now you already know the benefits of a co-located workplace and how it can prove difficult when much of your team is working from home. 

From poor remote communication to decreased productivity and employee satisfaction all this can be reflected in your remote work strategy or remote team if you are not able to manage them properly. 

One great solution for this is virtual offices. Virtual Offices are here to keep everyone on the team feeling productive, creative, and happy.

They are also a valuable tool for managing remote teams.

What Is a Virtual Office?

According to Investopedia, a virtual office gives businesses a physical address and office-related services without the overhead of a long lease and administrative staff. With a virtual office, employees can work from anywhere but still have things like a mailing address, phone answering services, meeting rooms, and videoconferencing.

In this article, we explore the role of virtual offices in enhancing remote teams and how they are helping managers increase their team’s productivity and satisfaction.

Inspire teamwork and  collaboration

When it comes down to the productivity of the team, it’s all about teamwork. No team succeeds because of the effort of a single individual. 

Success comes through a collective effort, and collaboration brings out each team member’s effort toward productivity. 

Team members are parts of a system, and each individual’s role must be well coordinated to count on the team’s general progress.

In any work environment, three things move together: communication, collaboration, and creativity. 

There is a better collaboration among team members when there is seamless communication among them, and this nurtures a favorable atmosphere for creative ideas and innovation.

The challenge of collaboration you would face with remote work is accurate, as the traditional approach of simply walking up to someone’s desk doesn’t apply. 

The way around this is the use of virtual office tools. The virtual office allows team members to better coordinate communications similar to in-person interactions, promoting collaboration and creativity in team members. 

Team members will be able to easily communicate their ideas to one another, all leading to greater productivity of team members.

Facilitate frequent communication

Anyone who’s ever managed or worked on a remote team knows one of the most disturbing challenges to remote work is communication. 

What could be discussed for a few minutes in person takes over an hour of messages, delays, follow up, and adjournments. That is a communication disaster.

In the absence of the traditional face-to-face opportunity, virtual office tools help replicate the same experience by providing a sense of availability of the person. 

They make it such that once a co-worker is available (not hooked up on another task or in another meeting), then you’re simply a click away from having a conversation with them.

Virtual office tools also provide good quality audio, and screen share capabilities to make communication a lot easier. They also provide virtual conference rooms for greater collaboration among team members.

Allows your team to express themselves better

It’s really easy for teammates to become reclusive and disconnected when remote. Team members often struggle to get to know their more introverted teammates. Who are they? What are their interests?

In addition to encouraging closeness through communication, good virtual offices provide ways for people to passively express themselves. 

Customizable avatars give individual team members the ability to share a bit about themselves with their teammates.

Other social signals, besides avatars, help too. Virtual offices provide ways to let teammates know your availability. 

They can integrate with your calendar to show when you’re in a meeting. And if you’re doing heads-down work and listening to music, virtual offices can provide a virtual “headphones on” signal that you’d normally see in the office.

Gives your Guests and Customers a Lasting Impression

With working remotely, one challenge you’ll face is losing some organizational setup, important aspects customers and guests of your business like to see. 

But when you have a virtual office set up, potential customers and guests are impressed as you have restored a great deal of the organizational aspects of the business.

The functional order and recreated virtual workspace instill some degree of trust in the customers and give them a reason not to doubt your competence as a business.

Furnished Offices in Nairobi // A Great Move For Your Business

And as a bonus, the right virtual office tool should make it easy for potential customers and guests to access necessary meetings and expository, and this access shouldn’t be lifeless.

They should feel connected, cared for, and personally connected to the meetings as individuals. 

Work-Life Boundaries

It’s often difficult to set boundaries between work and non-work time. 

Remote workers have especially murky boundaries because the place they work is also the place where they live. It can be challenging for remote workers to create the separation they need between work and life.

The 2019 State of Remote Work report found that remote workers work more than 40 hours 43% more than on-site employees do.

Virtual offices – remote workers say they work more than 40 hours per week 43% more than on-site workers do 

Virtual offices help teammates manage the boundaries between work and non-work time by providing a way to “enter” and “leave” the office. Once you’re in the office, you’re working. When you’re out, you’re at home.

Conclusion

Virtual Offices are a good way to boost your productivity as a remote worker or even as a manager for remote teams. So if you are looking for a virtual office then Nairobi Garage is the place to be as it offers The Club Space package which is an on-demand, super lean virtual office space solution.

Get to make connections with Nairobi’s entrepreneurial community in a Club designed for your growth and productivity.

If you’re working from home and need a drop-in virtual office space to work from, this is a great option. Or if you have a full-time office space, but just need something closer to home, or more connected to the entrepreneurial ecosystem – this is a winner. Signup today