Searching for office space for your growing small business? Why not consider a flexible executive office space for yourself and have your employees telecommute? You can also think about a virtual office solution for your small business and have everyone telecommute.
According to World at Work, there’s been a substantial increase year-over-year in the number of workplaces offering teleworking. In the USA and Canada, teleworking is offered to 42% of the nearly 2,300 employers surveyed – up from 30% in 2007. Teleworking is listed among more than 20 programs to attract and retain employees, ranging from the most popular (a signing bonus) all the way down to paid sabbaticals.
Telus (a major Canadian telecom) has found that teleworking can increase employee productivity by about 20%, after reviewing a pilot project where 170 employees worked from home. Besides increased productivity and morale, it also saved 14,000 hours of time in traffic!
But wait, it’s August and you want a vacation! With technology today, you can be doing a bit of business on the beach without your clients knowing that you are on vacation. Even while on vacation, a few of our office clients still want to appear as if they are still in their office space. They have receptionists forward their calls in the morning business hours to their cellphones, and straight to voice mail in the afternoons.
Transferring calls in the afternoon to voice mail is not a deceptive move, especially when clients are pre-informed that summer or vacation hours are from 9 am to noon. Let your customers know when you are going to be in front of a computer and when you won’t be – so you can handle general questions that do not require your computer.
If you are going out of town or out of the country for you vacation, you should consider getting a VoIP extension and receiving your calls anywhere in the world. With VoIP, you can appear to be in your office when receiving calls, as long as you have an Internet connection. This can work for a single employee or hundreds of employees.