Remote Working with a Virtual Office Address

Managing Your Business Remotely

Profound change has overturned the conventional business model of a long-term physical office lease. The restrictions of Covid 19 forced this adaptive change from the static to the dynamic, turbo-charging the full implementation of the digitized workplace. The immediate necessities of commercial survival disrupted all the previous accepted traditions - the daily employee commute, the office foyer with a full-time on-site receptionist, the rarely utilised office space paid for 24/7, the stringent inflexibility of long-term office leases. All disrupted.

New technology has allowed us to remotely manage our businesses with a dynamic flexibility. Some of us have even achieved that seemingly eternal quest for a wholesome work /life balance.

Virtual business services like virtual offices, virtual receptionists and virtual assistants have enabled business owners to reduce their costs and still leverage a more impressive business presence. We have now arrived at a sweet spot of remote agile business management and there is no turning back from this new paradigm, we can only venture further onwards to experience more change and disruption of “what was”. The Covid 19 pandemic simply turbo-charged the utilisation of digital tech for the workplace – it did not cause the development of tele-commuting and work from anywhere, but it did generate a dramatic take-up of the technology.

Now that Covid19 is thankfully in the past, it’s time to examine the best future scenarios for business structures and workplace management, free of panic, trepidation and the PR campaigns of big city property funds with their authoritarian pitch of “Get your butt back to the traditional office workspace five days a week - quick smart !”

The first consideration for any business owner defining their business infrastructure is viability, and viability works both ways - from distributed teams working from home to the viability of all employees working at the same office space, every day of their working week. If cost is not a consideration, then go for that long-term office lease at the most prestigious CBD address and spend your cash on an office refurbishment with a new paintjob, carpeting, furnishings, boardrooms and meeting rooms, a spacious foyer with a company receptionist answering calls just so - all with the colour scheme and ambience of your brand image. Spend big to look good - stick with convention.

But going with the conventional office space model means managing with your fingers crossed.

Can you be sure that your staff talent will want to commute back and forth to a city office 5 days a week? Fingers crossed they do. And what about business continuity ? Can you be so sure that there will not be another episode like Covid19, because now you have a long term office lease and all your staff in one place, you have put all your eggs in one basket. Fingers crossed that another social/ economic/ health disruption doesn’t come along and catch you napping in a sleep of complacency.

So is it really viable to revert to the conventional office structure – and remember, that also means you commuting 5 days a week – if you are going to foster loyalty and lead by example. Is it really vital to your business that you spend big on an office lease with all the accompanying outgoings? it is really such a crucial requirement for business success?

If you simply need a well-respected business address, then a Virtual Office rental will get you that image for a tiny fraction of the cost of a physical office lease. And if you also really wanted that prestigious business address to meet with clients – why not simply subscribe to a superb virtual office address that also provides office amenities like boardrooms, meeting rooms and co-working spaces on a high floor of some of the most iconic office towers in the CBD? It’s a sure bet that a dedicated and refined virtual office provider will have stylish amenities that far surpass whatever you have at your office lease. That’s their business. So let’s look at the viability of the other option, managing your business remotely with distributed teams working from home, a de-centralized workforce with a remote team culture fostered by high speed internet connectivity. Covid19 proved this business structure was viable but it seems the big fallback that everyone talks about was losing the face-to-face interaction with colleagues.

Sure workplace relationships have their important value, communicating by just strolling a few metres to the next desk is way faster than organising a Skype or Teams call, but think about it for a moment. How much real productive conversation was delivered in those days when whole cities performed the daily commute? The time spent travelling to and from the office was wasted time – can you also place a value on that?

Managing your business remotely doesn’t mean you never see your people up close and in person. Remote employee well-being is crucial and ensuring regular catch-ups is a normal part of managing a decentralised workforce. A virtual office address at a well situated office building close to all forms of transport at a location people LOVE TO VISIT is key to ensuring you provide staff with the dynamic face to face interaction with work colleagues. Let regular productive meetings in booked stylish ambience replace the 5 days a week commute. With this middle path of virtual office services you can have the best of both worlds – your people can have that work-life balance they’ve experienced and they won’t give up plus the interaction with their work-from- home colleagues.

No matter how many political cronies or big city finance spruikers say, “You can’t really run a business unless employees are all crammed in together in the same office space every working day”, we all know better now. You can have members of staff working from the other side of the world. You can manage your communications remotely with ease and work from anywhere. You can plough all the funds you’ve saved by not leasing and outfitting a conventional office lease on 1/ securing talent 2/ performing high value research, and 3/ building better products.

Naturally the flexible work place is not for every business owner, but the amazing growth across the world of virtual offices, co-working spaces, virtual receptionists and work-from-home lifestyles is proof that businesses everywhere are seizing the opportunities for flexibility that advances in digital technology and cloud computing have provided for all of us. From Melbourne to Mumbai or Miami, from Salzburg to Sao Paulo or Singapore, from Birmingham to Bangkok or Bergen, remote working and virtual business services are evolving the business landscape.

Join the change. Give our friendly service team a call to secure your virtual office solution.

Get your very own Virtual Office. It’s easy, choose from a 6, 12 or 24-month subscription. Complete the subscription form and attach your photo identification and you’ll have your new Virtual Office address set up in no time. Pay for 12 months and get an extra 3 months for FREE.

Want to take your business national? You could get yourself a virtual office in Brisbane, a Perth virtual office, or something in Canberra for a really cost effective price. NO minimum term