Are you looking to lower your business’s overhead costs? Are your employees growing by the day? Or do you have no finances to cover extra office space?
Then it may be the time you transitioned to a virtual office. Besides benefitting already established companies, it could help a startup grow its brand name.
Starting a virtual office infrastructure isn’t a challenging task, but the process has been made easier with the correct guidance, as this article will give.
Here are 7 Steps to Build a Stable Virtual Office Infrastructure:
1. Clearly Define Goals
Defining the company goals from the onset ensures that business operations run smoothly and know what you aim to achieve. Your company’s policy and vision should guide the setting of your business goals to ensure you remain on track. Holding seminars and training employees on your company goals will form a good working experience and relationship. These will guide the employees as they go about their day-to-day activities.
2. Plan Your Operations
Prepare a list of your business operations and clearly define who’s responsible for what. Have your department heads help you allocate tasks to the rest of the team. Assigning tasks to each of your members allows for accountability in non-performance. Consider starting or ending each working day with a short virtual meeting. The meeting will enable you to get feedback from your employees that you can use to better your virtual office infrastructure.
3. Invest In The Right Technology
Unlike the traditional physical office set-up where you could communicate, delegate tasks, and monitor your workers without the need for technology, a virtual office infrastructure demands more. You need to invest in software to ensure works are being done efficiently by your remote team.
The first tool that you need is a communication tool. Without physical interactions, your team needs to be connected to allow a seamless flow of business operations. This communication technology should enable your team to communicate via email, texts, calls, and clients to reach you. It should also allow for video conferencing for your virtual business meetings.
Hence, invest in software that offers all these features in one platform to reduce the need to acquire several tools, increasing your company’s expenses.
Invest in productivity tools that will monitor your team’s day-to-day activities as well. It would be a plus if the software could track the working hours of your team and keep records of sites visited during working hours. It might seem too much, but it’s necessary to ensure productivity and increase the returns for your business.
Consider acquiring project management software to keep you on track with your projects. Such tools can allocate tasks and allow for collaboration in handling group activities. Your business partners and workers can work on the same project despite their geographical location and bring it to completion without any hindrances. The tool should allow for document sharing and conferencing as well.
Security is another critical aspect that you need to consider. When you conduct your business operations through the internet, it increases the possibility of data theft and cyber-attacks. Therefore, it’s essential to invest in security software or partner with a security provider to assist your business.
4. Train Your Employees
For your virtual office infrastructure to kickstart and run efficiently, your team needs to be well conversant on how to go about the business operations.
Provide training on using any new technology being incorporated and ensure they understand it. Proper training reduces the possibility of a work stoppage due to employees getting stuck, reducing their productivity. It also safeguards your business and ensures customer satisfaction by reducing and eliminating errors that could cost your business. It avoids virtual fatigue.
Have the software providers and your IT team provide the training.
5. Get A Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant could be of help to your business. They can perform daily administrative functions, such as email management, customer support, data entry, and scheduling appointments. This way, your primary team can focus on the critical operations of your business, increasing its productivity.
Consider hiring an assistant that will work remotely instead of investing in software that will do the same, as this may reduce the overall expenditure of your business, such as licensing, maintenance, and running costs.
6. Set Performance Standards
Performance standards aim at setting a measure by which you’ll assess your business operations and progress. You can quantify this by using output, returns, and profits gained. Formulate the standards with your management team to help you remain on track and make amends where needed.
Besides business performance standards, set working standards for your workers. These standards will be a guiding principle on what’s expected of them even as they work virtually. Set the consequences of not adhering to the rules to reduce a lot of work politics.
7. Stay Connected To Your Team
A virtual office infrastructure set-up might bring with it detachment among your team members. It will help if you stay connected to them. You can do this by regularly holding informal virtual meetings to catch up with them.
