Adopting a virtual office has several benefits. Creating more flexible work spaces may improve employee happiness while also lowering your real estate portfolio’s long-term expenses.
In addition, virtual workplaces have their own set of obstacles. It may be more difficult to establish trust, maintain connections, cooperate, and ensure that every person has what they need to be productive, healthy, and happy when everyone is working in separate places without having physical access to one other’s offices.
The inability to disconnect was the most common complaint of remote workers in 2021, which isn’t surprising considering the prevalence of virtual workplaces.
You and your workers will face these issues regardless of whether your firm is totally remote or uses a flexible working model. A virtual workforce can’t do much for your business if you don’t have a plan in place to make use of it.
Here are a few tips or Virtual Teambuilding Activities for running a virtual office effectively.
1 – Go for Synchronous Communication:
“That meeting could’ve been done by email.” It’s no secret to those who have worked in corporate environments that superfluous meetings can be a real pain. As a result, virtual workplaces only serve to amplify these grievances since they limit the flexibility that makes them desirable and beneficial in the first place.
Organizing meetings and phone conversations becomes more difficult when individuals have diverse work hours and are spread out throughout the country. If you want to get in touch with a coworker, you can’t easily go over to their desk, yell across the open floor, or get on the elevator. It’s also possible that you won’t be able to rely on everyone being accessible at the same time.
If your team is spread across various time zones, synchronized communication becomes much more challenging. It’s not impossible, and people have been known to make impromptu video calls. The problem is that you don’t want to depend on these channels for asynchronous communication.
2 – Virtual Collaboration:
Asynchronous communication isn’t always the best option. These sessions may be more productive when individuals need to work on projects together or discuss their thoughts. It is easier for individuals to express themselves via nonverbal communication, such as their facial expressions, body language, tone, and emotional expressions.
The ability to build trusting working connections is a key component of being a successful team member. Text is made clearer and easier to understand when conversations are conducted strategically in real time, rather not only over the phone or in writing.
3 – Follow Up Employees Regularly:
Keeping an eye on how your workers are doing, what they’re dealing with, and how you can best help them is an important part of a good management plan. If you want to keep your staff engaged and motivated, you need to set clear short- and long-term objectives, relevant milestones, and provide ongoing direction.
Just like it would in a physical office, this can and should happen in a virtual one as well. Employees need to know that someone is listening to, reacting to, and supporting their needs, no matter how formal the meetings, virtual office hours, or Slack and email are set up.
