- Essential Elements of Productive Virtual Office Design
- Strategies for Optimizing Your Virtual Office
- Enhancing Productivity with Alliance Virtual Offices
Q. What key factors should be considered when designing a virtual office space for maximum productivity?
A: Key factors include creating a conducive work environment that minimizes distractions, incorporating ergonomic furniture and adequate lighting, and ensuring the space is equipped with the necessary technology and tools for seamless communication and collaboration.
It’s been four years since the world experienced a massive shift in how work is done, noting an important transition from traditional in-office work to remote and hybrid work in virtual office spaces.
A Forbes report shows that in those four years, approximately 40.9% of full-time U.S. employees have transitioned into remote and hybrid work settings, and that number is bound to continue increasing well into 2025.
There is no doubt that small businesses, entrepreneurs, and remote workers enjoy the numerous benefits of virtual office spaces over traditional offices.
Nevertheless, subtle constraints that manifest in various forms of digital burnout also serve as reminders for these businesses to reconsider how they structure their virtual office environments.
For context, the same Forbes report also indicated that 69% of remote workers experience increased burnout from the overuse of digital communication tools. In the same vein, 53% of remote workers complained that it’s harder to feel any form of connection with their coworkers.
These numbers are mostly the result of poor virtual office designs and processes.
Consequently, businesses need to develop strategies for designing virtual office spaces that maximize productivity and collaboration without impeding employees’ work-life balance.
Since your virtual office setup in various ways dictates how employees approach work, business owners should take responsibility to ensure the needs of their employees are factored into the design of their virtual office.
By extension, this also means ensuring that your virtual office space provider’s services are designed to incorporate all the necessities that bolster efficient, productive, and conducive hybrid work environments.
In so doing, you set the pace for a healthy remote work environment and experiences, which in turn propel the overall growth of your business.
Keep reading for detailed insights on productive workspace design.
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Essential Elements of Productive Virtual Office Design
Various elements inspire virtual office productivity. In forward-thinking businesses, these elements are, in a sense, a marriage of physical and virtual components working together to ensure the comfort and convenience of the users—in this case, you and your team members or employees.
We’ll address these elements across three processes:
- Creating a conducive work environment
- Incorporating collaboration tools
- Personalizing your virtual space
Creating a Conducive Work Environment
The first step to optimizing virtual workspaces for maximum productivity starts with ensuring that everything in your physical space effectively facilitates a seamless virtual work experience.
This is important, as your interactions with the physical elements could determine how you perform in the remote work environment.
Here are some things to consider:
- Ergonomic furniture: Remote work often demands sitting for many hours at a stretch, often leading to bad posture, poor blood circulation, neck pain, and back aches. All of these are sources of incredible discomfort that could be very distracting and may result in poor productivity, employee dissatisfaction, and decreased morale.
Ergonomic furniture are designed to relieve pressure on the hip, back, and neck and improve circulation, ensuring that remote workers feel as comfortable as possible while working. The sense of ease and comfort are impactful drivers for productivity and overall well-being.
- Proper lighting: Inadequate lighting is a recipe for eye strain, headaches, and even depression. On the other hand, proper lighting has been scientifically proven to be a significant factor in the efficiency and productivity of employees. Alongside reducing eye strains and the accompanying conditions, it also elevates mood and sets the ambiance to dive into a work headspace. Therefore, the virtual office setup, both at home and in the virtual office space, should always be well-lit.
These two elements, though easily overlooked, go a long way in ensuring an ergonomic virtual workspace and must be considered when designing virtual office spaces.
If not accounted for, you invariably put yourself, your employees, and team members at risk of physical injuries and mental conditions that drastically affect employees’ well-being and the overall productivity of your business.
At the very least, the consequences of the absence of proper lighting and comfortable furniture may be tagged alongside other elements that cause distractions in the workspace, such as:
- Too many digital devices: Although digital devices are necessary for facilitating remote work, having too many of them can lead to distractions. Do you need three screens when the work can be conveniently done from one?
- Poor virtual office décor ideas: It’s helpful to have arts, crafts, and other items that provoke motivation in the workspace. The question is: How do you arrange them, and how many of them do you need to stay focused?
Taking these considerations into account helps create conducive, distraction-free workspaces that boost creativity and productivity effectively.
Incorporating Collaboration Tools
The success of hybrid work environments is highly dependent on the seamless flow of communication and collaboration among team members.
Given that hybrid work requires minimal one-on-one physical interactions among employees and management, there’s an absolute need to take extra steps to enhance collaborations.
This means going all out to incorporate effective tools and platforms popular for enhancing remote team collaboration.
Some tools and platforms to look at when designing virtual office space for maximum productivity include the following:
- Slack is a central platform for coordinating all team activities, including team communication and collaboration, project management, and customer support.
- Asana, like Slack, can help coordinate most of your teams’ activities in one place. It’s useful for organizing tasks and projects, gathering insights, and monitoring priorities.
- Microsoft Teams enables teams in the Microsoft ecosystem to collaborate across various channels, using numerous Microsoft tools and features.
- Dropbox provides secure cloud storage for team members to collaborate on and manage business-critical documents.
- Miro helps team members map out thoughts and initiatives during team meetings.
- Zoom is one of the most influential drivers of remote work during the pandemic. Beyond its audio and video conferencing capabilities, the breakout rooms feature allows for more defined collaboration within small teams.
In addition to these and similar platforms, the meeting rooms offered by your virtual office space provider should be designed to ensure seamless in-person and online participation during virtual meetings.
Personalizing Your Virtual Office Space
Personalization is one consideration that should be at the forefront when designing office spaces.
Personalization for Solo Workers
Suppose you are a solo remote worker using virtual office spaces to boost your professionalism and credibility. In this instance, personalization could simply mean taking along some of your personal items when using the private office or meeting room at your virtual office location.
Love having an occasional staring contest with your tiny cactus plant when working? Framed pictures? Are there pens, notepads, or any stationery you consider special? Take them along.
Do you prefer working in spaces with natural air circulation? If the weather permits, crack the window open!
Personalization could also mean having a separate work computer with fewer social tabs and more business-critical tools you need to get work done on time.
Personalization for Remote Teams
As an entrepreneur or a small business owner/manager, the idea of personalization changes direction a bit.
Given that the team is small, you have to consider your team members’ needs—and even some of their quirks—when designing virtual office space for business productivity.
This is especially the case if those needs are instrumental to the overall efficiency and productivity of your business.
Here, personalization could be in the form of:
- Choosing virtual workspaces that are centrally located for all team members to facilitate easy commute on in-office days.
- Properly itemizing your virtual storage environments to ensure easy access, referencing, and collaboration.
- Throwing in noise-canceling headphones or other relevant items as incentives or virtual office productivity tools for your team members.
- Acknowledging that some team members perform better when they are not constantly on the camera, and occasionally allowing them the privilege of presenting via audio during some team meetings.
The nature of your work and the composition of your team will determine what counts as personalization in your virtual office setup.
Whatever they are, it’s important that these customizations gear towards enhancing remote team collaboration and productivity.
With regards to digital collaboration tools that could be easily customized to ensure maximum productivity, you should look towards incorporating virtual receptionists and virtual phone systems when designing virtual office spaces for your business.
Strategies for Optimizing Your Virtual Office
It’s very crucial that the design and accompanying elements of your virtual office space optimize your workflows and lead to outstanding productivity. Otherwise, all the efforts might as well be null.
Here are some ways to optimize your virtual office space.
Leveraging Technology for Efficiency
Digital collaboration tools and other technologies are prime facilitators of remote work environments.
However, having too many or including irrelevant technologies in your process could hinder efficiency and creativity in the workspace.
Technological benefits are maximized only when working with the right tools. Therefore, you should consider the points below when selecting the right technology for your virtual workspace:
By using these considerations to select the right tools, you will be able to effortlessly streamline workflows and reduce time spent on administrative tasks.
Designing for Wellness and Work-Life Balance
A Pew Research report indicated that about 71% of employees with remote-capable jobs who work remotely sometimes or most of the time find it helpful for work-life balance.
This notion of work-life balance quickly decimates when business owners do not consider the well-being of employees when designing virtual office spaces. It also disappears when business owners and managers inundate employees with numerous online meetings, as expressed in the concept of “zoom fatigue.”
Therefore, it’s important to incorporate wellness practices like the following into the virtual office setup:
- Maintain regular work hours: A shift to hybrid or fully remote work environment does not mean that employees should be invited to jump on calls or tasks at odd hours. If that’s ever the case, there must be cogent reasons and they should be adequately compensated for it.
- Scheduled breaks: Still in line with maintaining regular work hours, there’s also a need to acknowledge that employees need to take breaks. Institute schedules that allow employees to take breaks simultaneously or in teams without disrupting workflows.
- Mindfulness areas: If desired, opt for virtual office spaces with mindfulness areas where employees can unwind after intense work sessions. Also, encourage the employees to consider having such spots in their personal workspaces.
Alongside all these, consider scheduling events that incorporate physical activities or partnering with gyms to get discounted memberships for your team members or employees. Otherwise, it’s necessary to encourage them to engage in physical activities as often as possible.
Encouraging Team Interaction and Bonding
One of the things many remote workers dislike about remote work is the lack of a sense of connection with colleagues.
Apparently, thousands of hours of virtual collaborations are not enough to instill a solid sense of connection. Consequently, a general sense of belonging is seemingly absent in virtual office setups where these connections do not exist.
Therefore, it’s necessary to include virtual team bonding activities when designing virtual office spaces for maximum productivity.
There are various virtual games and activities for remote teams to engage in on platforms like Zoom and Slack to build team cohesion. They include:
- Trivia
- Escape Room
- Zoom Team Building Bingo
- Icebreaker Questions
- Fill in the Map
- Murder Mystery
- Pitch It
- Online workout and yoga classes
- Virtual coffee breaks.
Some tools allow team members to play the popular Google Chrome Dinosaur T-rex game online. You can find similar games that team members can participate in to reach high scores, earn bragging rights, and create vibrant inside jokes.
The activities promote social interaction and team cohesion that bolster the connectedness needed to cultivate effective collaborations and overall productivity.
Enhancing Productivity with Alliance Virtual Offices
Alliance Virtual Offices has been in the business of providing virtual office spaces for thousands of businesses for nearly 20 years.
Our popularity is entrenched in our determination to do everything right to ensure our clients effortlessly get all they need to stay productive in our virtual office spaces.
How Alliance Virtual Offices Facilitates Productive Virtual Workspaces
Our range of services, including live receptionists, meeting rooms, and virtual phone systems, are structured to help our clients build and maintain a professional and credible image while staying incredibly productive.
Here’s a quick breakdown of how our services are helping virtual businesses and remote workers stay productive:
- Live receptionists: For just $125 per month, this service equips small businesses and remote workers with the certified, fully professional receptionists they need to organize and handle all their customer care needs. Hence, remote businesses and workers are able to focus their time and commitment to building their business without calls constantly distracting them from ideating and innovating ways forward.
This service comes with a dedicated virtual phone number for your business, allowing you to effectively separate your work life from your personal life while juggling both with ease. Giving you the work-life balance you need to be productive.
- Meeting rooms, private office spaces, and coworking spaces: Sometimes, meeting a big client at a café doesn’t feel right. Other times, you need a proper office setting to process business thoughts and procedures. Whatever the case, Alliance Virtual Offices has been designing virtual office spaces since the early 2000s, all with maximum productivity in mind. Our workspaces serve as professional spaces that inspire creativity and are now popular as hubs for small business owners and freelancers to get work done efficiently.
We acknowledge that various businesses require different processes to stay competitive. Hence, virtual office productivity may mean different things to different clients.
We are always happy and available to help our clients define what a productive workspace design means to them and align our services to meet those needs.
Customizing Your Virtual Office Experience with AVO
We are able to align our services to easily integrate with clients’ operations and meet their needs because our services are flexible.
With flexibility and interoperability as top priorities when designing virtual office spaces at AVO, we’ve laid a foundation for clients to adjust our services to guarantee maximum productivity and collaboration.
Here’s how to leverage Alliance Virtual Offices services when designing your virtual office setup:
- Virtual phone system: This service provides you with a 411-listed local number with unlimited extensions. With an extension dedicated to each team member, the workflow becomes streamlined, as customers can maintain direct contact with specific team members.
- Live receptionist: With numerous features, such as professional recording services, personalized greetings, auto-attendant, professional appointment scheduling, lead capture, attended transfer, and DNDs, you can customize our live receptionist services to meet specific business needs.
- Flexible meeting rooms and private office spaces: Our professional meeting rooms and office spaces are designed to be noiseless and distraction-free. With efficient concierge services and setups already in place for hosting video calls and other business services, you have everything you need to design your virtual office setup to your taste.
- Digital mailbox: You can personalize your business mail to fit your virtual office schedules, with options to either:
- Pick up your business mail at your virtual office address,
- Have them scanned and sent to you over a secure server, or
- Have them forwarded to you daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or whatever interval you prefer
Now that we’ve looked at tips to a virtual office with Alliance Virtual Offices, let’s take a look at how some businesses have been able to optimize their remote work with our services.
Success Stories: Transformations Achieved Through Design
It’s easy for service providers to claim that they can do a thousand and one things, and it’s also hard for prospects to believe those things unless the provider’s clients are also saying the same thing.
That said, you can choose to throw some of what you have read so far on the back-burner and consider our clients’ success stories instead.
Bearded Alchemist LLC, UK
Javier Perez, the founder of Bearded Alchemist LLC, spends most of his time in the lab creating handcrafted, all-natural beard products.
All the customer-facing aspects of the business are virtual, and according to Javier, it doesn’t make sense to put his personal cell phone out on their web page.
He does not have the time, and he does not think it’s professional for him to be shuffling production and handling customers’ calls. However, he agrees that providing a positive experience for his customers is extremely important.
So, he redesigned Bearded Alchemist’s virtual operations with Alliance Virtual Offices’ live receptionist and virtual business number services.
In response to taking this step, he says:
“Sometimes I’m busy in the lab, so it’s nice to have the receptionists take the calls for us. It makes a big difference. It also really helps when they e-mail the message to me. I know that my clients are well-treated when they call, which is comforting and makes me very happy. They’re very professional, very friendly, and they’re genuinely nice people, which adds a personal touch.”
Javier no longer worries about missing calls, and he is able to use these services across various aspects of his business to achieve maximum productivity.
LaKeisha, Small Business Owner, VA
LaKeisha’s type of business doesn’t need a physical location, but she needed virtual office services that she could tailor to her online business. So, she went with Alliance Virtual Offices due to the fair pricing and customer reviews.
With the help of Alliance Virtual Offices, she was able to quickly complete her virtual office setup and leveraged AVO’s professional phone services to get things going right away.
Effortless virtual office setup
“The setup process was simple . . . Everything was self-explanatory. It took little to no effort, which was even easier or better because you’re trying to navigate through all the processes, documents, and everything else that you need to set up your business. Having such a straightforward way to get to your virtual services is a lifesaver. It helps you focus on the less minute details without having to exert yourself.”
Professional phone service for excellent customer service
“I’ve been trying to get everything together and have the right information available before they put in the voicemail. They were very patient with me even though I kept messing up. I’m very pleased with how professionally they treated me and how professional my voicemail and phone services have come out.”
Ebony, Small Business Owner, Texas
Ebony runs a small business that needed office and meeting spaces they could use on-demand and a professional address for their business mail.
For her, remote work productivity means being able to obtain business credit to push their business forward and reaching a wider audience online.
Here’s her successful experience as described by her.
Real physical workspace to complement remote operations
“I went out to one of Alliance’s offices, and I liked what I saw. They had actual addresses and not PO boxes. I wanted to be able to be able to schedule my meetings and go into the office. They have conference areas as well, so if I wanted to do training for my agents, I could do that. Then, once my business starts growing, I can have my office in the actual building if I choose to.”
Reliable support
“Everything was professional, and they had good customer service. If I call and they don’t answer, someone will always give me a call back — usually, the person that’s assigned to me. If I send him an email, he will respond promptly and help me with whatever I have an issue with.”
Success story
“They’ve impacted my business in a positive way. I have been able to get business credit because I have a physical address, and I have been able to place my business on Google.”
You can read more success stories on Consumer Affairs.
Wrapping Up
Designing virtual office spaces for maximum productivity might not be the easiest thing you have done recently, but it’s one that promises far too many benefits that you don’t want to ignore.
It’s important that you collect insights from team members and carry them along during the process. This is key for creating a truly conducive and inclusive remote work environment, making it easier for team cohesion and personalization attempts to work.
Further reading:
- What is a Virtual Office and How Does It Work?
- The Ultimate Guide to Setting Up Your Virtual Office Space
- What is a Satellite Office? Everything You Need to Know
- Why Our Premium Mail Forwarding Is Standard
More so, there is an absolute need to leverage technologies to streamline collaboration across all operations. However, due diligence must be done to ensure that the technologies are indeed appropriate and integrable with existing operations with minimal risk of security failures and downtimes.
Lastly, whatever element you incorporate when designing your virtual office setup must enhance team collaboration and the work-life balance of every person involved.
Not sure where to start? You can start from the scratch like LaKeisha did or follow Javier’s footsteps and start in the middle.
Whether you are just starting up or have been in business for a while, we are here to help you with digital communication tools that will guarantee maximum productivity in your virtual office.