Making sure virtual offices work
June 24, 2008
A while back I commented on the benefits of virtual offices as a way of working flexibly in locations outside of the office environment. However of course with all working arrangements there are drawbacks, and the concept of the virtual office does provide a few issues for HR when implementing the scheme. However, with careful planning and effective management, these issues don’t have to become a headache and it is possible to enable the arrangement to work exceptionally well if you take the time to consider what will stop it succeeding and how you can overcome this.
So what are the drawbacks to a virtual office arrangement? In any working arrangement, there are the positive and negative aspects, and for some employees the benefits of having the flexibility in where they are working can be reduced by the loss of social contact with other employees that is gained when working in an office environment. The road can be a lonely place when you’re on it alone for a long period of time. Other drawbacks include the difficulty of line managers to supervise, manage performance and provide support to workers who they do not see from one week to the next. There’s also a large amount of trust needed between manager and employee for this arrangement to work effectively, and managers who like to know what their staff are up to all the time will find it very difficult to adapt to these kinds of alternative working methods.
So what steps can organisations take to ensure the virtual office doesn’t fail in its early implementation stages? A virtual office policy would be a good place to start, as this would set out specific needs and actions to be taken by employees and managers operating with these arrangements. The policy would need to include provisions for regular meetings between employee and manager or ‘virtual’ teams, in order that the employee working flexibly is able to receive suitable support, training and performance management from their manager, and so that the sense of team spirit and team working, so important for many organisations, is not lost. Careful consideration must be made to the virtual office arrangements in performance management activities as it will obviously be more difficult to measure objectives when there is less contact. Objective setting should be based on easily measurable ‘outputs’, for example sales figures or customer feedback, and time should be allocated for the manager to observe actual performance so that the ‘inputs’, i.e. the employee’s sales technique, presenting skills etc can also be measured.
To combat the isolation factor, virtual office working can be a part time option for employees; no arrangement needs to be on an ‘all or nothing’ basis. This is where hot desking can be useful; so that employees who work half or more than half of their time in virtual offices in other locations do not need a costly permanent desk at head office but can have one available if needed.
Clearly, there are a few issues to consider when looking to introduce virtual office arrangements, however this should not be a reason to avoid the scheme altogether. If managed properly, giving due consideration to the possible pitfalls and resolving these issues prior to the start of the scheme, then the virtual office can be of great benefit to both employer and employee. With virtual office arrangements all over the country available from specialist providers, it is possible to have the best of both worlds with minimum effort.
Do you work in a virtual office environment? Have you met any of the problems highlighted above and how have they been resolved?
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We have opened several Virtual Offices worldwide and our employees taken on the concept really well.
They have more time to spend with their family, but they also know if they don’t do their work and get distracted by anything at home, their job is on the line.
Overall, it works out great for us and especially for them.