The researchers are tying flexible schedules with more sleep and more exercise. The study appears in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and concludes that workers who tap into flex time opportunities are happier and healthier. That’s a boon for virtual office workers, who enjoy perhaps the great flexibility of all.

“We theorize greater schedule control and reduced work-family conflict as key mechanisms linking this initiative with health outcomes,” the authors write. “Increasing employees’ schedule control and reducing their work-family conflict are key mechanisms linking the ROWE innovation with changes in employees’ health behaviors; they also predict changes in well-being measures, providing indirect links between ROWE and well-being.”

ROWE stands for Results Only Work Environment, which focuses only on the end results an employee drives rather than how many hours they work. Virtual offices set the stage for companies to implement ROWE and give employees more freedom, which can ultimately lower turnover and drive greater employee engagement.

Alternative workplace strategies like virtual office space also help companies save significant dollars on commercial real estate expenses. With virtual office space, you can reserve less physical office space without losing the ability for employees to collaborate. Mobile and virtual office technologies make it possible for employees to build teams and drive results in a distributed workforce.

According to a new survey from Accountemps, it seems pretty important. And I might add maybe even more so in a down economy and even more so when you work from virtual offices where your colleagues may not get a chance to know you as well through the less frequent contact.

The survey reveals that 79 percent of Chief Financial Officers said an employee’s sense of humor is important for fitting into the company’s corporate culture. CFOs were asked, “How important is an employee’s sense of humor in him or her fitting into your company’s corporate culture?” Their responses:

• Very important: 22%
• Somewhat important: 57%
• Not at all important: 20%
• Don’t know/no answer: 1%

“Sometimes, a little levity goes a long way toward building rapport among colleagues and diffusing workplace tension. All work and no play can erode employee morale,” says Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps and author of Managing Your Career For Dummies.

“Job candidates should let their personality shine when meeting prospective employers. The interview is no place for a standup comedy routine, but it is the right time to show hiring managers you are approachable and will be easy to work with.”

OK, so humor is important in the workplace. And that goes for the virtual office worker too. In a world of e-mails, instant messages and Skype calls, showing your lighter side can help people to get to know the real you. A good laugh from your respective virtual offices can help the “bonding” process, as it were.

So whether you from a coworking facility or a virtual office space, lighten up now and again. Have a laugh—all in good taste, of course.

Located between the beach and Downtown Los Angeles, Culver City offers an ideal location. Culver City is just six miles north of Los Angeles International Airport and near the intersection of the Santa Monica and San Diego Freeways, and the eastern terminus of the Marina Freeway.

Culver City describes itself as a modern and progressive community with a vibrant business environment and an exceptional quality of life. Culver City has an expanding multimedia hub and a mecca for the fashion and architecture industries.

Davinci Virtual Office Solutions has virtual office space in Culver City at the Culver City Business Center. Located at 400 Corporate Pointe, the Culver City Business Center offers a prime business address in a prestigious location.

Your Culver City virtual office offers mail and package receipt, a business support center, a professional lobby greeter to welcome visiting clients or clients dropping off and picking up packages. You can opt for mail forwarding and shipping services if you can’t get to the Culver City location to pick up your mail in person.

You can also rent a Culver City meeting room by the hour or opt for a virtual office package with 16 hours of meeting room time built in. Day offices are also available at this Culver City location.

Check out this video on Culver City to get a taste of where your new virtual office is located:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I found this intriguing. With virtual offices on the rise, it stands to reason that more employees are going to have friends who are telecommuting. They see the benefits their virtual office using friends enjoy, like saving gas money, driving more productivity, and getting home a little earlier from work.

So how do you convince your boss to let you work from a virtual office? How do you even bring up the topic and justify your case? You can get some great tips from Lisa in her article. I’ve summarized the points here:

• Take the time to understand how your manager feels about telecommuting in general
• Conduct research to determine if any other employees telecommute and how they went about getting it approved – learn from their experience!
• Build a solid case for why telecommuting will work and include the specific details on how you will ensure it will work
• Use only professionally linked reasons for why you want to telecommute
• Ensure you address all sides of the telecommuting situation, including the hot points of your boss
• Recommend a trial period to ensure your manager (and you) are comfortable with the arrangement
• Do you have advice based on personal experiences with telecommuting that I haven’t listed? Share them below in the “Comments” section.
• Build a solid case for why telecommuting will work and include the specific details on how you will ensure it will work
• Use only professionally linked reasons for why you want to telecommute
• Ensure you address all sides of the telecommuting situation, including the hot points of your boss
• Recommend a trial period to ensure your manager (and you) are comfortable with the arrangement

If your boss does buy into the virtual office idea, you can turn to Davinci Virtual Office Solutions for virtual office technologies that help you work smarter, faster and more efficiently.

Although the coworking trend is making headlines in metros like New York and San Francisco, virtual office space is a time-tested alternative to traditional office space. Indeed, virtual offices space is a perfect fit for 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 rises above 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.

The new mobile app lets you place VoIP calls from your mobile phone over Wi-Fi. You can also view, receive and send faxes from anywhere you happen to be, as well as search and listen to voicemail messages on the go, and even make conference calls from anywhere in the world right from your iPhone.

Want to get it now? Davinci Virtual’s new app works for Apple iPhones, iPads or iPod touch devices and is available in the iTunes store at no charge. That’s right, free!

“Our new iPhone app allows our clients to interact with the Davinci Virtual platform with ease from their mobile device—anywhere,” says Martin Senn, COO of Davinci Virtual. “An Android version is already in development and slated to be released shortly. Davinci continues to develop applications that power the mobile work environment.”

Davinci Virtual provides virtual office solutions to more than 10,000 companies and entrepreneurs in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Central America, Asia and Australia. The company offers more than 850 virtual office locations including virtual offices in Manhattan, San Francisco virtual offices, virtual offices in Atlanta, virtual offices in Houston and any other metropolitan area throughout the world. You choose from live receptionist services, prime business addresses and flexible meeting spaces—instantly—online.

So what are you waiting for? If you are sporting an Apple product, head over to the App Store right now and download your Davinci Virtual Office Solutions app. And if you don’t have an Apple product, hold tight. We’ll have an app for you soon!

First, let’s look at women and telecommuting. A strong majority of employees in 24 countries agree equally (83%; 46% strongly, 47% somewhat) on two assessments of telecommuting:

(1) that it will keep talented women in the workforce instead of leaving temporarily or completely to raise children and
(2) that telecommuters have less stress due to less time spent in getting to their workplace.

From those perspectives, virtual offices can be a bastion for retaining top female talent.

On the stress front, 60 percent survey participants in Russia strongly agree telecommuters have less stress as a result of less time spent getting to work, followed by Turkey (53%), Hungary (51%), Argentina (45%) and Mexico (45%). The Swedes (19%) are least likely to strongly agree, followed by Australia (21%), Great Britain (22%), the United States (24%) and China (25%). It seems people in the U.S. stay stressed out no matter where they work.

Finally, 78 percent that employees who telecommute are better able to achieve balance between work and family. That’s a very high number and a very strong case for virtual office space.

But education, age and income also has something to do with virtual office use. People with a high level of education are most likely to telecommute on a frequent basis (25%) followed by those under the age of 35 (20%) and those with a high household income (20%). Men (19%) are more likely than women (16%) to telecommute frequently. Of course, that doesn’t mean these are the only demographics embracing virtual offices–just the front runners.

All this is interesting data, but the bigger question is this: Will the telecommuting trend—and the virtual office trend by connection—gain momentum? That depends on whom you ask.

Globally, one third (34%) of connected employees agree they would be “very likely” to take the option to telecommute on a full time basis from their home or other location if their employer offered them the opportunity. This sentiment is felt most strongly in the Middle East and Africa (49%), Latin America (45%) and Asia Pacific (33%).

While the Western regions are softer on this measure, three in ten employees in Europe (31%) and one quarter of those in North America (26%), who do not currently telecommute on a frequent basis, report they are ‘very likely’ to take the option if offered by their employer.

All in all, it seems the virtual office trend is bound to gain more momentum as employees who have the ability to telecommute embrace the work style. But can virtual offices and telecommuting actually drive stronger work-life balance? That’s the subject of our next article. Come back tomorrow for more.

What’s more, seven percent say they “work every day from home which is remote or separate from their employers real office elsewhere.” And another 10 percent say they do so “on a very consistent and constant basis like evenings and weekends.”

Before we go any further, let’s define the world telecommuting as it’s used in this survey. Telecommuting is when an employee uses a stationary or portable computer to do their office work from a location outside of their office—either from their home or another location—either regularly or from time to time. Telecommuting and virtual offices go hand in hand.

Often referred to as “telecommuters,” these employees have the flexibility of using telecommunications—such as e-mail, phone, online chat—to communicate with colleagues in real time or do their work online from a remote location any time they wish—usually when they log in to their worksite—including evenings and weekends. It stands to reason that many telecommuters work from a virtual office.

The Ipsos study also looked at whether or not telecommuters are more productive. Many studies show that people who work from virtual offices are indeed more productive. But what did this study say?

Two thirds, or 65 percent, said telecommuters are more productive because the flexibility allows them to work when they have the most focus and/or because having maximum control over the work environment and schedule leads to job satisfaction and happiness. The other third, or 35 percent, agree that telecommuters do not work as hard because there is less manager supervision and/or because of family and social distractions at home.

Ten overweight but otherwise healthy adults on a moderate calorie-restricted diet were randomly assigned to sleep either 5.5 hours or 8.5 hours each night in a closed clinical research environment. After two weeks, researchers measured loss of fat and lean body mass. Compared to participants who slept 5.5 hours a night, the dieters that slept for 8.5 hours lost a whopping 56 percent more body fat. The dieters in the sleep restricted group had lost less fat and more lean body mass.

“Among other hormonal effects, we found that sleep restriction caused an increase in ghrelin levels in the blood,” says Plamen Penev, MD, PhD, assistant professor, Section of Endocrinology, at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study. “Ghrelin is a hormone that has been shown to reduce energy expenditure, stimulate hunger and food intake, promote retention of fat, and increase glucose production in the body.”

The conclusion: It’s importance to get adequate sleep to maintain fat-free body mass when dieting to lose weight. The Ghrelin factor could explain why sleep-deprived participants also reported feeling hungrier during the study. The study shows that even short periods of sleep deprivation can undermine efforts to lose weight. When restricting calories, dieters should consider obtaining adequate amounts of sleep to ensure that they retain lean body mass and lose fat.

So what does that have to do with a virtual office? There are two angles on this. One of them we have explored before. When you work from a virtual office, you are more productive. There are less distractions than when you work in one of a row of cubicles in a traditional office space. There are also fewer distractions than when you work from a coworking facility or a coffee shop. With fewer distractions, you can get more work done, get to bed at a decent hour, and enjoy a good night’s rest.

The other angle is avoiding the temptation to eat. When you work from a Starbucks, you may load up on coffee, but you might also be tempted to load up on high-calorie cappuccinos, pastries and other goodies in the refrigerated section. If you work in traditional office space, you may be tempted to go out to lunch with co-workers who aren’t watching their weight and end up eating something you wish you hadn’t. With a virtual office space, you can take control of your time—and your caloric intake—more easily.