Archive for January, 2010
Looking for a few good reasons to let employees telecommute? I discovered some research from Pennsylvania State University called, “The Good, the Bad and the Unknown About Telecommuting: Meta-Analysis of Psychological Mediators and Individual Consequences.”
OK, so that’s a mouthful, I know. But there are some strategic insights and bona fide reasons why telecommuting might be a good option for your company.
With the advent of virtual office space, telecommuting has never been easier – and that’s a bonus reason. The reasons in the study go well beyond the cost-efficiencies of virtual office space.
Happier Employees
That’s right. Happier employees. The study makes a positive connection between telecommuting and job satisfaction. What’s more, the study reveals employees who telecommute are less likely to quit. Generally speaking, I am also betting that happier employees are more productive employees.
More Productive Employees
Guess what? I was right. The study showed just that. Employees in the study didn’t necessarily feel more productive, but there was a clear connection between telecommuting and the manager’s perception of employee productivity.
Positive Relationships
Common sense seems to scream that telecommuting employees might be or feel isolated. But the study showed that employees who worked from home three days a week actually has no negative impact on workplace relationships – and it’s actually better for families.
Positive Families
That’s right – telecommuting is better for families. Some people might think having hubbie or daddy in the home office might blur the lines between business and pleasure, or put stress on the family. But the study shows that the opposite is reality.
Free Employees
Finally, telecommuting employees have a sense of freedom and control. This finding was actually a foundation from which the other benefits of telecommuting seem to emerge.
So, are you ready to give a virtual office space a try? Companies large and small are succeeding with a distributed workforce, mobile workers, and telecommuters for all the reasons listed above and others. And, back to my original assertion, you can cut costs with a virtual office space even as your employees are happier, more productive, form positive relationships, enhance family life and feel free.
Small business owners don’t always need a full-time, dedicated office space. In decades past, the alternative was working from home and having lunch meetings with clients in restaurants, hoping they didn’t ask to come to your office.
The rise of virtual office space helps entrepreneurs overcome the challenges typically associated with working from home, such as maintaining a professional business identity that’s separate and apart from your three-bedroom house or loft apartment.
With a virtual office space, you get a prestigious business mailing address in your city of choice. That means whether you want to be listed in your hometown or are expanding your small business footprint into new cities, your business address can work for you, not against you.
A virtual office space also works hand in hand with another important aspect of business professionalism – the virtual receptionist. A virtual receptionist can answer the 800 number that’s assigned to your virtual office account with a customized greeting that gives clients a strong first impression. The virtual receptionist can also serve to make appointments and screen calls so you can focus on getting through that long list on your desk.
If you are like many entrepreneurs, you don’t yet need a traditional office space. Even if you do have employees, they may also working from home. Maybe you meet up together once a month for a face-to-face brainstorming session, or maybe you connect via video conferencing technologies. You may not need traditional office space, then but a virtual office space with all its amenities can be a cost-effective way to take your business image to the next level.
You have questions about traditional office alternatives. Virtual office space offers cost-effective answers. The million-dollar question is: Should you choose a virtual office or a coworking facility?
Although the coworking trend is making headlines in cities like San Francisco and Atlanta, virtual office space is a time-tested alternative to traditional office space. Indeed, virtual offices space is ideal for a small business that doesn’t need access to a full-time office space and doesn’t like the idea of working side by side with potentially distracting strangers.
Coworking has its advantages, such as collaboration with other like-minded entrepreneurs. But virtual office space trumps both coworking and traditional offices by offering more privacy at a lower cost than either option. Virtual offices also give you access to virtual receptionists and virtual assistants — none of which share office space with you.
With virtual office space, you can essentially work from anywhere, including your home office, on the road, or in a meeting room associated with your virtual office provider. That means you get the best of all worlds: privacy when you need it and collaboration when you want it.
Sure, coworking is picking up steam for good reasons. It’s much less expensive than traditional office space and gives you a place to go when you need to break the haze of isolation. But virtual office space costs even less than a coworking facility and gives you the same opportunity to break the monotony of working from home by making available day offices and meeting rooms.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to office space. Some prefer the traditional office, despite its high costs and long leases. Others prefer coworking, despite the open environment and potential distractions. But virtual office space is often the alternative of choice for entrepreneurs who want the flexibility to work in solitude without breaking the start-up bank.
Did you know the video conferencing market is set to reach $11.9 billion this year? That’s an amazing figure, and one that shows the sheer demand for this type of collaborative technology.
It’s no wonder. Video conferencing increases productivity, cuts travel expenses, improves communications, strengthens relationships, and otherwise makes you more effective.
Davinci Virtual understands the vital role video conferencing plays for more and more companies. That’s why we’re launching the “All You Can Eat” video conferencing promotion. Aside from the clever play on your favorite buffet-style restaurant, Davinci Virtual is truly offering a strong value play for busy entrepreneurs and executives who need to be in more places than time allows.
Davinci Virtual offers video conferencing via WebEx, so you get the performance, reliability and security that comes with the Cisco brand name, plus a rich feature set to make your online meetings easy. WebEx combines real-time desktop sharing with phone conferencing so everyone sees the same thing while you talk. After you try it just once, you’ll agree that it’s far more productive than e-mailing files and struggling to get everyone on the same page over the phone.
With unlimited usage for only $69.95 a month and no set up fee, you can begin saving money and increasing productivity today. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for your All You Can Eat video conferencing today, or contact chat online with a Davinci Virtual representative if you have questions about the service.
The term ‘virtual receptionist’ may not be in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but it’s certainly in the vocabulary of a growing number of companies, large and small.
Indeed, the virtual receptionist is a growing trend in today’s business world, from Corporate America right down to the bootstrapping start-up – and everywhere in between. In fact, you could very well be speaking with a virtual receptionist when you call your doctor, accountant, lawyer or other professional services firm. You might be speaking with a virtual receptionist when you place a telephone order for goods and services of all kinds. You might even encounter a virtual receptionist when you call the local offices of an international company you are doing business with.
The virtual receptionist can do more than answer the phone – much more. They can become an extension of your business, gaining an understanding of your company as they deal with day-to-day issues that arise around appointments, cancellations, executive messaging preferences, and various tasks that can be handled over the telephone. The virtual receptionist is always professional, always knowledgeable, and always ready to help callers to your business find a solution or get the answers they need.
If you are spending too much time answering your phones, if you need someone to screen your calls to avoid wasting time, if you need help setting appointments, a virtual receptionist can save you time coming and going – and help you remain more available for customers in different time zones.
The oft-dreaded April 15th tax deadline is right around the corner. If you are like many companies, you are getting your business receipts in order to hand over to your accountant.
OK, so what does a virtual office space have to do with your 2009 taxes?
Well, if you are running a bona fide business and use a virtual office space as part of your solution, you can deduct the monthly expense just as you would a cell phone or office supplies you use as part and parcel of your operations.
Let’s say you are a sales organization. Your salesmen stay on the road most of the time and work from home the rest of the time. You come together once a quarter in a meeting room, but otherwise it’s each man to his own home office. You use a virtual office so you can all share a common street address and an 800 phone number complete with a virtual receptionist.
We’ve already covered that you can write off your virtual office space costs on your returns, but there are other tax issues to consider.
For example, if your employees are using their own cars to travel from client site to client site, then they should keep track of that business-related mileage, along with tolls and parking costs. The employees can submit this to you for reimbursement and you can write this off on your taxes, along with your virtual office costs.
Of course, you should always seek the advice of your accountant on deductions. But virtual office space and related travel expenses are standard deductions for most small and large companies alike.
Bootstrapping, budget-minded entrepreneurs are exploring virtual offices in a down economy. But it’s not just the affordable monthly costs that has start-ups jumping on the virtual office bandwagon (and it’s not just the down economy, either) it’s the affordable start-up costs that make good sense for companies of all sizes.
Unlike renting traditional office space, launching a virtual office comes with little upfront expense. Sure, you may have to buy a new computer, hook up a new phone line, or extend the minutes on your cell phone plan. Yes, you may have to get letterhead printed, design some business cards, and perhaps even build a Web site. But those are all typical business start-up costs.
In other words, you’d have to do all that anyway. With a virtual office, you merely shed the brick-and-mortar overhead by working from home (or at your favorite coffee shop). Altogether, virtual offices are helping start ups get off to a good start without the stress of a long-term lease hanging over their head.
The virtual office is a place to grow from, and may actually offer additional advantages for under-resourced boot-strappers. For example, you’ll probably find you and your employees are more productive in a virtual office set up because there’s no commute time and fewer distractions from co-workers at the water cooler. All in all, the risk-free, low-cost nature of virtual offices are offering entrepreneurs the flexibility they need to succeed.
Everybody wants the corner office. It’s the most desirable spot because it’s usually the largest space on the floor – and it often offers the best view.
The good news is when you tap into virtual office space, you (and all your employees if you have a distributed workforce) can brag about having the coveted corner office all to yourself. Of course, that corner office is in the comfort of your own home.
Perhaps even better than having the “corner office” all to yourself is the ability to do business from just about anywhere at any time without missing a beat. When you work from a virtual office space, you can work beyond the four walls of a home office. You can work from a coffee shop, a train depot, a doctor’s office, or just about anywhere else life takes you.
Indeed, there’s no need to lose productivity when you work from a virtual office space. So long as you are equipped with a laptop, a Wi-Fi connection, and a cell phone, your virtual office space can travel with you and keep your overhead to a minimum. Your phones can be answered by a professional virtual receptionist, your mail delivered to a prestigious business address, and your clients can meet you in a state-of-the-art meeting room when you work from a virtual office space.
One of the key advantages of the virtual office space is avoiding commute time. When you use a virtual office space, commuting to your corner office often means taking a few steps from the bedroom to the spare bedroom where your high-tech bells and whistles await. Even if your home office isn’t in the corner and doesn’t offer a view, you may decide that working in a virtual office space could actually be more coveted than the old-fashioned corner office.
Remember when you first heard about the concept of telecommuting? Most companies couldn’t imagine how this concept could benefit them.
Fast forward a couple of decades and the notion of virtual offices is catching on as a way for companies to breed more productive workers at lower costs with higher retention rates. What a difference a couple of decades make…
There are two sides to the virtual office coin worth exploring: the employer and employee.
On the employer side, virtual offices are an attractive option because they lowers the cost of acquiring, leasing, furnishing and maintaining traditional office space. What’s more, companies can expand their recruiting efforts beyond their immediate region, opening wide the possibilities of finding better-suited talent for specific jobs. The perfect candidate may be unwilling to relocate his family to your city, and a virtual office means he doesn’t have to.
On the employee side, a virtual office spells convenience. Gone are the days of sitting in traffic, long commutes – and the expensive gas bills that go along with it. No more sitting in traffic trying to make the most of a congested situation. Instead, the employee can work from the comfort of their home with virtual office technologies that help them work smarter, faster and more efficiently – and with less stress and personal expense.
At the end of the day, the virtual office can be just as effective a backdrop for getting business done as a traditional office space. The fact that virtual offices are being used in almost every industry – including arts, education and marketing – speak volumes about the benefits of a virtual office.
Need some help around the office but aren’t sure the time is right to hire a full-time staffer? If you answered “yes,” to that question, you may be a candidate for a virtual assistant.
Virtual assistants are a cost-effective way to find qualified and competent help in a hurry – and they can focus on the specific tasks you need help with. Much different than calling a temporary employment agency to hire part-time help for a defined contractual period, virtual assistants give you the freedom of on-demand help.
The virtual assistant model makes it possible for your company to hire a marketing assistant for six hour a week, for example, or someone to book travel as the occasion arises. The virtual assistant model doesn’t tie you down to a specific number of hours each week – and you don’t have to host them at your facility. They can work from anywhere.
Virtual assistants also allow you to play against time. For example, if your company’s clients are concentrated on the West Coast but your headquarters are on the East Coast, you can hire a virtual assistant on the West Coast to handle phone calls and other tasks after your normal business hours. It works in the opposite direction as well. An East Coast-based virtual assistant can take calls and requests before your West Coast business opens its doors in the morning.
And since virtual assistants have their own office equipment, you don’t have to furnish them with computers and telephones to get the job done. Then there’s the issue of productivity. Your full-time staff can concentrate on agenda items that only they can handle and rely on a virtual assistant to take on more rote tasks that nonetheless need to be done.
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