Virtual offices can afford many obvious benefits – No traffic headaches or parking hassles. More flexible work hours. No expensive office or equipment leases. Technology enables easier, quicker team collaboration. Playing with your puppy at lunch. So, from both an employee and employer perspective, what’s not to like?
Less Obvious Benefits of a Virtual Workforce
Moving your workplace from “brick and mortar” to virtual provides many less-obvious benefits. Leading organizations find ways to leverage these hidden gems of virtual work to their advantage, and you can too. Here are some “gems” you may not have yet considered:
- Increased Worker Productivity. Several notable studies show remote workers are more efficient and productive, including those by:
- Stanford/CTrip (remote employees made 13% more calls than in-office workers)
- SalesForce (86% of employees report that their productivity at home is excellent or good)
- TINYPulse (91% of remote workers say they are more productive than when they worked in-office)
- Airtasker (virtual employees worked the equivalent of 1.4 more days per month than in-office counterparts).
- Attracting the Best Talent. Taking your workplace virtual gives you the freedom to hire top-notch diversified talent regardless of physical location. This can be important for both large and small organizations for whom talent pools may be extremely limited, either because of the nature of the work or the size or demographics of the community.
- Better Customer Service. Particularly for member or sales related organizations, delivering quality customer service is always top of mind. Taking your workforce virtual creates a fertile environment for upping your organization’s customer experience. For example, you can redirect funding you would have paid for your lease or mortgage to investments in CRM platforms with AI tools, smarter communication tools, upgraded technologies, and expanded services to provide a higher level of service to their customers.
- Ancillary Cost Savings. As mentioned above, moving from physical to virtual often generates other significant savings beyond the lease. Foregoing physical office space also means foregoing expenses for electricity, hard wired phones, copiers, parking expenses, and shared office supplies.
- Less Office Waste. By human nature, workers tend to be thriftier with their own materials than those they share in the office – so, there tends to be less waste generated from printing materials or hoarding office supplies.
Personal Office Space Autonomy
Working remotely allows your employees the freedom to optimize their own work environments. They can set up both their physical and their mental spaces in a fashion that helps them perform better. With no commute, less time is spent going to work and more time can be spent doing the work. Plus, working virtually often requires workers to learn new technologies and skills to be able to do their jobs remotely. Learning those tools can feel overwhelming, but because they are learning in a familiar environment, your employees can experience less anxiety and accelerate the adoption of the tools they need.
Summary
Shifting your mindset from commuting to your home office instead of commuting daily to an external office is not always easy. Although you may understand the benefits of virtual work, implementing them can often feel overwhelming and unobtainable. If you need help starting your journey to a permanent remote workplace, assistance is available. Achurch Consulting has been thinking about – and leveraging – these hidden gems of virtual offices since 2015. Please contact us for more information.