Managing a Virtual Office Successfully

Author: abhishekkumar | Posted: 27.05.2012

Given the demands of employees for increased flexibility and freedom at work, the trend of a virtual office is on the rise. The rising trend has also given way to the raging debate of the feasibility of such an office set-up. However, the success or failure of your virtual workplace has more to do with your managerial skills than anything else.

If you want to exploit the cost benefits of having a virtual office, here are a few managerial tips that could come in handy:

Organize meetings and luncheons every now and then

A common point against the concept of a virtual workplace is the lack of relationship building. Brick and mortar offices have people interacting with each other face to face, which is what leads to healthy relations. To make sure that your team maintains its motivation levels and has a good vibe flowing through it, luncheons or dinners every now and then could come in handy. Even if you have employees in different cities, you could organize a meet-up for people living in the same city. If you do that about a couple of time in a month, it works great for building strong relations among your team members.

A per hour payout is better than a monthly wage

With a ‘real’ office, you have people right in front of you, which gives you more command on them. However, with your employees working virtually, you often lose that command. Thus, if you have agreed upon a monthly wage and for whatever reason, an employee refuses to put in the required number of hours, it could complicate matters. It is always a good practice to pay by the hour if you are running a satellite office. That solves two purposes- it does away with the losses you may suffer because employee A does not put in the required number of hours per week; two, it helps maintain the motivation levels of your workforce too. When they know that they are earning by the hour, they generally put in the extra hours than not.

Getting a virtual assistant and other services

The task of managing your virtual team can be a lot. If you don’t want to screw that up, it is wise to avail of virtual office packages which include services such as mail handling, call forwarding, virtual secretary etc. That ways, you can concentrate on managing your team while other aspects of business are handled by someone competent.

If you get the above right, there are more chances than not that you would succeed with a satellite office business model. As for the naysayers out there, ‘to each, his own.’



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