Remote control – virtual offices and the remote working revolution
In a previous lifetime, I had a favourite café that I swung by pretty much every morning for my daily fix of the sweet, sweet black elixir of perpetual awakedness. In the slightly dingy back corner of the establishment, there was a table that was perennially occupied by the same youngish-looking, shabbily dressed gentleman with ostentatiously large headphones permanently ensconced on his head, tapping furiously on the keyboard of his shiny, new MacBook Pro.
We always made eye contact and shared a chaste nod of recognition as I entered, but we never spoke. Until the day I caught him with those ubiquitous headphones momentarily disengaged and managed to shoehorn in a verbal salutation.
“G’day. How’re you going?” He responded to my initial offering in a resonant baritone.
“Yeah, good mate. Yourself?” I parried.
“Can’t complain. Bit under the pump at the moment, so trying to smash it out.” I was a little bit taken aback. While I’d not given it terribly much thought, his fixtured presence at the café and shabby clothes had always led me to assume that he was unemployed or at best a part-timer.
“That’s the ticket,” I tried to sound unsurprised. “What do you do?” I asked.
“I work for…,” he responded nonchalantly, mentioning the name of a start-up tech company that went from operating out of the founder’s mother’s basement to a household name almost overnight. This time, my shock and curiosity were a little harder to disguise.
“Wow,” I exclaimed, jaw somewhat agape. “what do you do for them?” I pried.
“I’m the CMO”. Any remaining pretence I had about this guy’s professional credentials evaporated in a wisp of coffee steam. “Ooh! I’ve been waiting for this guy to come on Slack!” He exclaimed, “sorry mate, it’s been great to finally say hi. I’d love to catch up more, but I’ve got a major deadline that I need to hit. Have a good one!” And with that, the earphones, which I now noticed were top of the range Focal Utopias worth an obscene $4,000, were restored to their rightful position and he resumed his frantic tapping.
The company that Mr Apparently-Not-As-Shabby-As-I-Had-Originally-Supposed worked for is famous not only for its meteoric rise to prominence but also for the fact that it operates almost entirely virtually. The majority of its employees work remotely and they maintain only a small office in an obscure location. The advent of cloud computing and the explosion of cloud-based applications that allow workers to perform virtually any task from pretty much anywhere in the world is a game-changer when it comes to the way that we work. No longer is it a given that employees will spend extended periods every day trapped in the metal box of their choice, commuting to a set location where they will spend the next 8 hours or so, before jumping back in that box and heading home. Advances in technology mean that most office jobs can now be performed from anywhere with an internet connection. From Google, Apple, Cisco and Dell, to Novartis, CitiBank, AmEx, Lockheed Martin and countless others, organisations large and small are clueing into the manifold advantages of a virtual working environment, remote working and telecommuting. Here are a few convincing reasons why:
Numerous studies have shown that remote workers report higher job satisfaction, general happiness and physical health.
It doesn’t take a quantum physicist to realise that satisfied employees tend to stick around for far longer than the disgruntled. Employee turnover is a weighty cost to businesses and anything that reduced this can save enormous time, resources and money.
While the more conservative sceptics might scoff and invoke images of lazy employees sitting in their PJs watching cat videos on YouTube all day, the fact is that remote workers have been proven to be more motivated and productive.
The moment a company sets up a physical office, they automatically exclude hiring talent from other cities, or those in the same town who are unable/unwilling to commute to that chosen location. By unshackling the geographical chains, virtual companies can access the best and brightest from literally anywhere on the planet.
Maintaining a physical office is an expensive proposition. Companies that allow their staff to telecommute can save untold thousands every month on these costs, leaving themselves more resource to invest in people and growth.
Despite this weight of evidence, many people still question the value of wholesale telecommuting. After all, how are you supposed to instil confidence in clients and prospective partners or collaborators with an outer-suburban garage for a corporate address? What happens when you need to hold that crucial meeting and Mum’s stained coffee table won’t quite cut it? What about team cohesion and interaction? All fair questions and ones that any company considering going virtual needs to consider carefully. Fortunately, APSO has the answer.
APSO virtual office solutions provide everything required to support a remote-working culture. Not only will you receive a premium business address in the city or cities of your choice, but we have packages that include a host of services, such as mail forwarding, call answering, message forwarding, as well as access to professional meeting rooms and business lounges when required. In this way, we can help you put your best foot forward and create a positive first impression with a prime address at one of our prominent virtual and serviced office locations throughout Australia.
Contact APSO today to find out why some of the fastest growing companies in Australia are choosing our virtual office solutions as the home base that supports their virtual or remote working culture and keeps their businesses humming.
