(Newswire.net — February 7, 2023) — The remote work revolution of the pandemic era is the great change in the way people work, since the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. Whereas the Industrial Revolution shifted the center of production from households to factories, the remote work revolution shifted the center of production from offices back to households. In addition, large businesses realized that they could dismantle their big corporate headquarters, and operate out of multiple satellite offices, or, with a hybrid work model, or, in some instances, fully remote. This revolution would not be possible without virtual offices, meeting tools, and office technologies that allow workers to work online and not in-person.
Attract the Best Talents
Dror Poleg believes that technology has made it possible to monetize very specific niche qualities. For example, in the passion economy, a person can build a business earning $100,000 a year, serving just 1000 or even 100 true fans, who pay $100 a year, in the case of the 1,000 true fans model, or, $1,000 a year, in the case of the 100 true fans model. Consumers have become very specific about what they want, and businesses, if they are to respond to the needs of their consumers, they have to hire a very specific type of employee.
This is true even outside the passion economy. For instance, the Wall Street Journal reports that one of their best engineers earns 300 times the average engineer’s salary within the company. Alan Eustace, Google’s vice president of engineering told the paper that he would rather lose an entire incoming engineering class than lose this or any of his best engineers. For businesses, remote work allows them to compete for a global marketplace of workers. By building a business around virtual offices, they can hire workers who might otherwise not be within physical reach of the business, or who might not want to move near your business. This is especially true at a time when many workers want to work remotely, allowing them to travel while working or to live outside of big cities.
Scale Your Business
Office space is one of the biggest expenditures that a business faces. Whether you’re buying office space, or renting it out, it leaves a massive dent in your business’ capital. If you are willing to reimagine the nature of your business and build it around a virtual office, your business will be able to use those savings to invest in value-creating activities. However, it’s not merely about the savings made, it’s also about changing the company and turning it into a capital-light business that is built to scale very quickly.
Up until very recently, it was assumed that workers couldn’t scale their work, because they only have so many hours in the day. For example, no matter how good a doctor is, that doctor can only work a certain number of hours. Even the most overworked doctor cannot work more than 24 hours a day, and in that time, perform only so many procedures or consult with so many patients. There is a hard limit set by biology and the length of the day. The tools of a virtual office, such as video conferencing apps, and social media platforms, allow workers to generate earnings for the company, even when they are not physically working. For example, if you have a consultancy business, you can create a mostly digital business that can operate around the clock, for a global audience.
A business can hire globally, focusing on building a large talent base, rather than spending on office space, and focus those savings on scaling the business and increasing productivity. The nature of virtual offices also means that the costs are lower because they are more on-demand or packaged. For example, you can opt to have mail scanning from a virtual office service, or some other specific service, depending on what your business needs. You can learn more about virtual office services here.
Increase Productivity
Prior to the pandemic, it was thought that workers’ productivity would decline if workers worked remotely. Managers felt, and about 13% still do, according to PwC, that workers were better off within office spaces. However, the pandemic proved that line of thinking wrong. By using virtual offices, remote workers were able to achieve similar or higher levels of productivity, because they had the freedom to manage their time, and use their knowledge of their specific work to figure out the best way to work. Today, 61% of remote workers work remotely because they prefer to.
It can be hard for more traditional-minded managers to swallow, but, workers understand their specific tasks much better than their managers, and, given targets and tasks, are able to achieve those targets. Productivity has simply not declined thanks to remote work. In fact, in some instances, it has risen. This is further aided by the fact that workers today feel happier because they have more control over their lives. The Great Resignation was, after all, motivated by millions of workers wanting to enjoy a better work-life balance. The United States is also undergoing a Great Migration, with people moving to the South and West in search of lower costs of living, bigger houses, and a higher standard of living. Allowing workers the ability to achieve these aims by organizing your business around virtual offices, not only helps you retain existing talent, but it also helps to attract new talent. Happy workers are productive workers, and workers seem happier outside the office.
It can also be said that virtual offices have enabled a new era of productivity. Workers are obliged to operate through meeting rooms for collaborative tasks. Workers within a specific meeting room understand what they are supposed to be doing. Other workers can step inside these rooms to learn what’s going on. A status can be put up to inform people about what you’re doing and if you are willing to be interrupted. This makes the work more focused, which also aids in building up the productivity of the business.