Posts Tagged ‘telecommuting’
NEW YORK-Telecommuting is all the rage, but that doesn’t mean that your boss is necessarily buying into it. Lisa Quast, a contributor to Forbes magazine, is offering some tips for convincing your boss to let you telecommute.
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.
NEW YORK—Are you working 60- to 70-hour shifts? If so, you aren’t alone. In many workplaces, staff has been reduced. In others, it’s a matter of working longer hours to generate new business.
Working from a virtual office can save you many hours of time in telecommuting and office distractions alone every day. But while virtual offices can definitely save time and bolster productivity, it’s not the only weapon in your time management arsenal.
Productivity and time management expert Laura Stack is suggesting we take a “work smarter” approach to living life in 2012 without suffering the high pressure burnout and potential health problems that many Americans are facing in their overburdened lifestyles, rife with distractions and low priority time sinks that interfere with work productivity and personal productivity. Virtual offices can help you avoid a lot of those distractions.
“Some professionals view a 40-hour work week as part time at best,” Stack says. “They believe that if you limit your hours to the traditional number, you also limit your opportunities.”
Stack says balancing the demands of the times with a healthy lifestyle requires careful planning and commitment to fitting positive productivity practices into the daily schedule. Among her suggestions: turn off the technology, visualize the successful completion of the days’ tasks, identifying priorities, and cut back or eliminate unnecessary distractions that eat up large portions of the day.
“Many people would be surprised if they added up all the minutes in a day they spent with unnecessary distractions like Facebook, for instance. We all need to attack our overcrowded daily itineraries head on, schedule everything we do during the day in advance, and stick to that plan to the best of our abilities,” Stack says.
“Obviously you can’t account for the unexpected all the time, but if you remain flexible and focused, you can stay on track without falling back into the same old pattern of burning the midnight oil night after night.”
Check out this classic video on time management tips from Brian Tracy:
Business development. Non-profit. Account management. Medical and health. Data entry. These are the leaders in the flexible jobs category for January. So says FlexJobs.
FlexJobs is predicting that 2012 will be a big year for telecommuting jobs. I agree wholeheartedly. The trend is rising and it hasn’t hit its height yet. And where there is an increase in telecommuting, flexible work hours and other alternative workplace strategies there is a rise in the use of virtual office space.
“It’s exciting to see more and more telecommuting, freelance, part-time and flexible schedule jobs being offered in wide range of careers,” says Sara Sutton Fell, CEO and Founder of FlexJobs.
“There are many, many studies that have been concluding the overall benefits for companies to offer jobs that provide work flexibility for their staff, such as cost savings, increased productivity, and overall happier and less stressed employees. We have seen significant growth in the flexible jobs market in the past five years, and we anticipate more of the same for 2012!”
In December, FlexJobs reports that the Medical & Health category reclaimed the top position as the career field with the highest percentage of flexible job openings, a position it held for nine of the 12 months in 2011.
Following Medical & Health with the next highest number of flexible job openings in order were Administrative, Education & Training, Computer & IT, and Sales.
Meanwhile, career fields which saw the biggest declines in available positions in December were Graphic Design, Bilingual, Web & Software Development, Art & Creative and Customer Service.
I look forward to the FlexJobs report every month because it helps me track virtual office trends. I expect to see even more awareness of virtual offices in 2012 as flexible job directories like FlexJobs gain momentum—and as employers begin to realize that there are many different types of jobs that one can do from a virtual office.
NEW YORK-Virtualizing the workforce. It’s a trend that’s been gathering momentum for decades, but it perhaps reached a tipping point in the last 12 months. Now, further evidence emerges that this trend is here to stay.
Virtual business solutions provider Arise Virtual Solutions worked with Frost & Sullivan to publish a white paper called, “Virtualizing the Workplace: Cut Costs, Improve Customer Satisfaction and Achieve Flexibility through Homeshoring.”
The white paper highlights the many unique and substantial benefits organizations gain from virtualization and the use of self-employed, work-at-home agents. Many of these workers, of course, use virtual office space.
“In its emerging years, the homeshoring model was an interesting alternative to the traditional call center, yet questions remained about its long-term viability. Today, it is clear that those questions have been answered,” says Ashwin Iyer, Global Contact Centre Director at Frost & Sullivan.
“Virtualization service providers have developed innovative models that ensure quality and allow companies to cut costs in their customer service models while trusting that their customers’ needs will be met.”
Although much of the report deals with call center agents, it’s clear that this is not the only segment of the industry that is virtualizing the workforce. Many industries now have a distributed workforce, which includes telecommuters working at home from virtual offices and mobile workers. Homeshoring’s model is one whose time has come, and will give further momentum to the virtual office industry.
Check out this video to learn more about homeshoring:
NEW YORK-So you work in a virtual office … so how do you attend office parties? That’s what CNBC.com staff writer Cindy Perman wants to know—and she got me a little curious, too.
Perman asks the pointed question, “The Virtual Office Holiday Party—How Does That Work, Exactly?” She looks at the trend toward companies taking their office holiday party online, whether for financial or geographic reasons—or simply out of convenience.
In her article, Perman offers some answers: “First, you have to pick a time and date and invite a list of guests, just as you would for a regular party. And, while parties can and do take on a life of their own, it’s important for the organizers to have some sort of itinerary to keep the festivities moving.”
The article goes on to offer examples of gift exchanges that were planned in advance, a virtual whiteboard where folks share their holiday traditions along with live chat with explanations, cash gifts instead of food and drinks, and so on. Be sure to read Perman’s article for more ideas.
But you may have some ideas of your own. If your company has implemented alternative workplace strategies, if you have a distributed workforce with mobile workers and telecommuters who work from virtual offices, there’s no doubt that you’ve faced this issue of the virtual office party.
Sure, if your employees all live in the same city, you could go to a restaurant or rent a meeting room. But then the virtual office party is no longer virtual, is it. So, tell me … have you organized or attended a virtual office party? How did that work for you?
NEW YORK-The holidays are a wonderful time, but holidays also bring plenty of stress with them for many of us. After all, there’s more to do at work, home, and otherwise. With so many year-end projects of my own to complete, I can certainly relate to the concept of racing against time. Virtual offices can help.
Consider the statistics from an Accountemps survey:
Thirty-nine percent of workers interviewed said it is more challenging to manage their workloads during the holidays. The additional burden comes at a time when many professionals are already feeling the pinch: More than four in 10 respondents (41 percent) indicated their current workloads are too heavy.
“The holidays can be an especially busy time for many workers, who are trying to balance business priorities with personal demands,” says Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps and author of Motivating Employees For Dummies.
“This time of year can be particularly challenging for accounting and finance professionals, who are managing year-end close, tax-season preparation, financial reporting requirements and other cyclical initiatives. Managers must ensure work is completed while also avoiding overtaxing internal staff, who may already be stretched thin.”
Accountemps is offering a suggestion: To help employees better balance work-life demands, offer flexible schedules or telecommuting options to staff whose jobs do not require them to be on-site. Virtual offices can empower those telecommuting options. Virtual offices can give employees the freedom to work at least part of the day, or several days of the week, at home. Believe me, they will thank you into the new year.
Have a nice laugh with this YouTube video:
Virtual offices are getting more high-profile media attention this week.
This time Fox News’ own Donna Fucaldo dives into the world of on demand offices, conference rooms and virtual office space in an article entitled, “No More Coffee House Meetings.” If you’ve ever been relegated to a business meeting in a coffee shop, you identify with this headline oh so well.
In her article, Fucaldo rightly contends that small business owners who work out of their homes no longer need to rely on Starbucks to hold meetings. That, she writes, is because on demand offices and conference rooms are rising up to fill the space needs of today’s business owners.
“While conducting meetings at the local coffee shop has its perks, free coffee, WiFi, it could potentially send the wrong message to potential clients and investors,” Fucaldo writes. “Using a virtual office also gives a small business an address they can use on their business cards.”
Fucaldo also acknowledges the fact that virtual offices have been around for a while, but quickly follows up that thought with another one: the virtual office trend has been growing in popularity in recent years. Part of that is the down economy, but part of that is the realization that commercial real estate is not always necessary. Alternative workplace strategies
Davinci Virtual Office Solutions is on the cutting edge of the virtual office trend, as well as meeting rooms and conference rooms. Davinci Virtual Office Solutions is the industry leader in key virtual turnkey communications and offers virtual offices, day offices, meeting rooms and conference rooms around the world.
Our DavinciMeetingRooms.com offers an online reservation platform that makes finding and booking a meeting room fast and easy. DavinciMeetingRooms.com offers more than 600 meeting room locations around the world.
If you are want to work from a virtual office, well, ‘tis the season—especially if you are in the administrative career field.
Flexible job listings in administration rose 32 percent in November, outpacing even the medical jobs category that has long been number one. So says the latest Flexible Job Index for November 2011. But even if you aren’t in administration, there are plenty of virtual office jobs in other fields. Beyond administration, writing jobs also saw a large jump, increasing 29 percent.
Consider the results of the survey, which offers the top five industries in terms of volume:
1. Administrative: 6.7%
2. Medical & Health: 6.3%
3. Customer Service: 5.6%
4. Education & Training: 5.1%
5. Computer & IT: 5.0%
“It’s definitely interesting that medical jobs are down during the winter months,” says Sara Sutton Fell, CEO of FlexJobs. “And, frankly, we were surprised to see an increase in writing jobs during a notoriously slow time of year.”
On the downside, medical and health jobs were down about 2 percent. The five career fields that experienced the largest drop in the volume of flexible jobs include:
1. Account Management: 27.2%
2. Insurance: 25.0%
3. Medical & Health: 21.8%
4. Consulting: 16.0%
5. Art & Creative: 14.7%
I continue to find these monthly reports fascinating because it measures the growth in job fields that allow virtual office use, telecommuting, flex-time and other alternative workplace arrangements.
DENVER—I love reading Entrepreneur magazine because it deals with issues that are relevant to folks like me—and you—like virtual offices. I read an article today penned by Christopher Hann.
Hann offered the answer to a pointed question: When should a company allow its employees to work from home? I the piece, he relied on experts like Jim Ball, co-founder of Alpine Access, a Denver-based virtual call center company and telecommuting pioneer.
“You have to have it in your DNA the fact that you don’t have workers coming into an office space,” Ball told Entrepreneur. Ball has 4,500 employees across the U.S. who all work from home, so he knows from which he speaks.
Hann’s article also pointed to stats from the Telework Research Network pointing to the reality of 3 million Americans working from a virtual office. This is nothing readers of Davinci Virtual’s blog don’t know, but it’s great to see more momentum for all things virtual.
“In coming years’ work forces, this is going to become more of an expectation with [younger workers],” Ball told Entrepreneur. “Preparing for that is really going to give your company access to what’s really going to make you successful, and that’s high-quality talent.”
Whether you are in Denver or one of the other cities from which Ball’s employees work, you can rely on Davinci Virtual Office Solutions to help you execute your alternative workplace strategies.
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