Virtual Work Environment: A Revolutionary Business Setup Is Future Businesses Model

There are many companies around the globe which are adopting “Virtual Business Work Environment”. One of the biggest example is Digital Marketing company with 60 employees working in remote environment. Today we will share various information related to it. You can consider it a brief guide or wiki of Virtual Business Set-up.

What Is Virtual Work Environment?
Before getting into the details, let’s first understand what virtual work environment actually is?!.

It is a business setup without any physical office. It means each staff member works from a remote location, which can be his home, office, garage, beach, or garden. Neither boss nor employees need to come daily to any place called, office. They do work with a systematic approach for sure, but the only thing is they don’t need to commute to work in a closed environment. They are free to choose from where they can give the best output and results.

Sounds interesting? Sounds weird? Sounds crazy? Whatever your first thought is but the fact is there are a few very successful international companies which work in the virtual environment.

There are so many benefits of this type of business set-up. Here are a few key benefits:

• You Can Recruit Worldwide Talent
• For any business its team is a very important contributor in its failure or success. If you have a skilled, enthusiastic and adroit team, you win half of the battle as a business owner or entrepreneur. While you run an in-house setup, you are bound with choice of local talent. Whilst with the virtual work environment you can hire talent from any part of the world. Here, you can focus to get the best talent on board to serve your customers. One added advantage is you can also fine superior service at low rates because same service has less rates in other countries compare to yours.
• You Can Keep Yourself free from People Management to Focus on Business
• While you have an in-house team working for you, you have to put in a mechanism in place to manage those resources. In the virtual work environment, you are free from this task. Because, you are hiring self motivated people working for their aspirations, you don’t need to make any strict HR policies or code of conducts to be followed. What you need to do is convey your vision and expected results clearly to each employee working for you. You can utilize these saved time and efforts for growing your business.
• Reduced Infrastructure Cost which Can Be Used To Pay More and Earn More
• As you are not having an office setup, you can save a huge amount of money which would otherwise spend on leasing an office, setting up whole infrastructure, etc. This amount can be further invested in paying better to your staff, which can work in your favor to get more commitment and productivity. This will bestow you with earning loyalty of your staff and doing more business.
• Improved Productivity and Its Benefits
• Whether you believe it or not, giving an open platform along with the free working environment will gain you more productivity. When you show trust on your people, they give their best output compared to the environment when you put critical eyes on them with a solid work pressure. This is the reason so many industries and companies gives work from home facility to their employees, now. Your employees may get work freedom as well as they will save time on commuting from home to office and vice verse. This will gain improved productivity for sure.
• Offer 24*7 Services; Have Representatives In Different Countries
• As you can hire people from different parts of the world, you can hire people from different time-zones. With this type of setup, you won’t need to put different work shifts; still you can run your business 24*7. You can also have your representatives in different countries, which can be utilized to cater your customers in a personalized manner.

How to setup a successful virtual work environment?
This is a really tough job, but anyways entrepreneurship is not easy. Is it? To run a successful virtual work environment, you must follow below mentioned practices (P.S.: these are my personal suggestions based on my industry experience. You can have different and more beneficial practice based on yours):

• Be Determinant to run a virtual business
• Learn to trust your people
• Set up a clear and easy to understand vision, goals and expectation
• Be selective in recruitment. Hire people who can match your enthusiasm
• Convey your goals, vision and expectations clearly to each executive you hire
• Use technological tools to track work and time. You can use open source solutions or can develop your own. Here there are 2 scenarios to keep in mind while selecting tool:
  1. Your business nature demands the outcome than time spent on it. For example: website development or content writing service. It can be done within 1 working day or 10 working days.
  2. Your business nature demands that your executive stays available in front of the system during a specific time slot. For example, you offer real-time support services, in which, you demand your executive stays available during normal working hours.
• In both situations, you must have the tools to track expected work and commitment. Thus, be selective and thoughtful while selecting tools.
• Use regular reporting. Yes, you trust your people, but as a business owner, you have to be ensured each hired talent is working at his best and not eating time. Thus, put reporting system by which you can check the regular work done and progress made.
• Have an arrangement to keep all employees aligned. Though your business works in a virtual environment, you have to have some mechanism by which your team members can work as a team. You can have Skype calls or a conference at least once in a month. You can also use digitization at its best. Use a CRM system or have a webpage in which you can share the basic details of the employees working for you along with their social profiles. Thus, your team can know each colleague and can also connect with each other.

Why It Can Be A Successful Setup?
Well, here your people will be responsible to give their best performance. You won’t need to put yourself to get best out of them. This is the major reason of its success. The virtual business environment works on a simple fundamental,

“We, as a company, will give you everything you want: better package, complete work freedom, an open environment, access to advanced tools and technologies, on behalf of this, you have to give us remarkable work quality along with the desired quantity. If you can’t deliver that we, the company, have many other talents around the globe who would be happily doing this for us.”

Why can it be a failed venture?
Poor management and lack of trust can sink your business. If you get into this virtual business setup and keep on being anxious whether your staff is working or not, you will end-up spying on them or irritating them. This would invite failure for your venture.

To defeat the failure, what you need to do is, keep one thing in mind: Don’t hold it so hard, it hurts you; don’t hold it so loose, it goes out of control.

Why this is a future business model?
We all know international business is increasing. While your customers can hire you, why can’t you hire remote people? The answer of this question and the benefits of this business model have sowed the seed for this business model. Many young entrepreneurs have started adopting this business model.

About Author: Ash Vyas

Ash Vyas has 10+ years of practical experience in digital marketing and international business development. She has written 100s of articles on various topics to live her passion of helping people with her knowledge and expertise. In addition to directing Digital Marketers India, Ash also delivers keynote sessions and holds key positions in some international companies as a consultant, director of operations and mentor.

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