5 tips for making a great virtual workplace

Nowadays, more and more online businesses operate on a principle of a virtual workplace. Even some traditional businesses are starting to employ more and more remote workers. Let’s face it, not a lot of people finish work when they leave the office, which is why having a virtual workplace allows one to continue their work back at home, instead of having to stay those extra hours. This is pragmatic for employees and frugal for the entrepreneur. With all of this in mind, here are several tips for making a great virtual workplace.

1.      Open leadership

The first trait of a truly virtual office lies in the idea of open leadership. Due to the fact that your team members aren’t in the office, which means that they can’t be supervised in the physical world, the last thing they need is someone micro-managing them in the virtual environment. The problem with this concept lies in the fact that the physical distance between the management and the leadership prolongs the time it takes for these two parties to establish a relationship based on trust. It would be much simpler to give your employees a higher degree of autonomy and oversee them via an employee monitoring tool. In this way, you still have everything under control, the biggest difference is that now you’re doing it with a much softer approach.

2.      Providing incentives

One of the greatest problems with work in a virtual workplace is the issue of loyalty. When working in an actual office, people make personal relationships with their boss and coworkers, while in the virtual environment such a thing is harder to achieve. Moreover, the hierarchical structure is not as clearly outlined, which is why it’s sometimes hard to tell between a promotion and a lateral movement. Nonetheless, a commentary on the improvement of their skills, new challenging tasks, bonuses and performance pay may be strong incentives that work even here. Most importantly, by making a meritocratic work environment, you’ll incentivize your employees to work twice as hard.

3.      Physical proximity is optional

The idea that your team is working in a virtual workplace doesn’t mean that they are prohibited from working at the same location. In fact, a lot of online teams decide to look for a shared office to inhabit. Being nearby has numerous benefits, the first and the most obvious one being the fact that they all share the time-zone and work law. In other words, for your Sydney-based company, hiring people mostly in NSW would be a smart move. In this way, you can look for a serviced office in Sydney, if you need it but you can also arrange meetings every now and then. This can help you show appreciation for your team and even strengthen the team unity.

4.      Communication

Perhaps the most important issue in the virtual workplace is the communication tool or tools. You see, communicating via an email is a business world standard, however, you might also need a platform for exchanging data, which is why Dropbox or another collaboration tool is necessary. You should also get a standard IM software. Skype, Viber or Facebook Messenger may sound like an obvious choice but the fact that people also use them privately tends to be quite problematic. This is why most companies look for an alternative.

5.      Workforce flexibility

The reason why virtual workplaces work so well is due to the phenomenon known as workforce flexibility. Freelancers on a performance pay don’t have to be laid off when the workload reduces and it’s easy to bring new people on board. Moreover, by offering a performance pay, you don’t get to overpay slackers, while it’s easy to see how the most hard-working and ambitious members of your team might get some additional motivation to work extra hard. Flexible work hours allow people to choose when they work, which is great due to the fact that some people prefer working late hours. Lastly, this kind of business model is amazing for introverts and may help them outperform your expectations.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, a virtual office isn’t that different from a traditional one in the sense that your own ability to organize it plays a major impact in the productivity of people working in it. The biggest difference lies in means through which you achieve this. Instead of layout, color palette and ergonomics, you do so with adequate tools and policies.