5 ways that a virtual office can help your home-based business

Home-based work is rising in popularity. More people than ever before are entering the workforce as freelancers, entrepreneurs, remote consultants, etc. One benefit of this phenomenon is reducing the administrative burden and costs of running a business due to not having to lease a separate physical space.

However, a business is not a hobby and must be treated with respect. A home setting isn’t exactly a perfect place to meet an angel investor. 

Furthermore, running a business exposes you to unwanted solicitations via phone or mail which may be something you want to keep away from your home. Typically, you’d want a receptionist or an office assistant to keep such clutter and distractions away from you.

Virtual offices allow their users to run and grow their business from home and remain professional at the same time. They also present an added buffer between your home and the professional setting.

1. Improve Your Business’ Credentials

A leading benefit of a virtual office is that it provides you with a dedicated phone number with call forwarding and a reputable location to receive mail. This will improve your standing with Google which is known to sometimes deny registering a business at home addresses.

Running a business from home means that the first point of contact with a customer will not always be as professional as can be. Virtual offices offer the services of a live receptionist. This is a person with customer service skills who will professionally handle queries that are not essential and thus free up your time.

While work can be done and managed remotely, meeting in person sometimes needs to happen. Whether it's your team, customers, or even investors, having a professional environment at hand, for occasional use, is necessary. Virtual office providers often offer meeting spaces in desirable locations, much better than a coffee shop or a home setting.

2. Lower Your Overhead Costs

Companies spend anywhere between 15-45% of their budget on rent. The location of a business is important. It provides a functional and pleasant working space for your employees, as well as a place clients or customers can get to quickly.

A virtual office allows you to retain these benefits while running a home-based business. You get to grow your business at your own pace, adding features and perks as per your needs. Tech solutions exist for video communications, so a coworking space may not be necessary immediately. As the business grows coworking and meeting space may become a necessity.

Even after that growth point of your business when you decide to start using physical offices and coworking spaces, you can still provide a level of flexibility to your employees with a hybrid work arrangement.

3. Employee Motivation

Recent experience has shown that many employees thrive in a home-office environment. It allows them to better manage their time and distribute tasks throughout the day. They can even intersperse it with their other chores and commitments leading to a better work-life balance.

Juggling multiple job tasks, as well as family and chores at home can be an issue. Thankfully, there is multitasking software out there to help keep track of it all.

Because work-life balance is of major importance to most employees, this leads to more satisfaction and thereby - more motivation. Employees are empowered to manage their own schedules and can set their own pace, which will paradoxically help them hit their deadlines more consistently.

4. Environmental Concerns

Being environmentally friendly is all the rage nowadays. Companies bend over backward to attain the various prestigious labels, formal and informal, of being environmentally friendly. Let's be honest, no one is quite buying it. Large corporations will donate measly sums to environmental causes, but traffic pollution caused by all their employees alone is staggering.

People are starting to see through this ruse and are turning to alternatives - local and small businesses. As we get more environmentally conscious, adopting alternatives to physical office resources will become increasingly important. Even a small business can churn out a large amount of paper.

Large companies are trying to stay in the loop by adopting new technologies. For example, Binance is building its office in the metaverse. Metaverse may well be the future of home-based businesses as it promises to combine into one package various features of remote work software that we already have. 

Going virtual this way may bring additional benefits, such as increased visibility in this rapidly growing environment as well as the prestige of being an early adopter. Whatever the solution for your business, electronic documents are the future of office work for the advantages they provide in sharing, editing, accessibility, and saving.

All these options and benefits can seem confusing and induce analysis paralysis, so it can be helpful to consult a more comprehensive guide to remote work to weigh your best options, as well as their costs and benefits.

5. Wide Pool of Employees

Maybe you don’t need some of your employees to come into the office often. Maybe you barely ever need to see them in person. This expands the pool of potential employees drastically. You are now tapping into talent globally.

The potential to tap into the global pool of talent is so powerful that in a few years' time, you might even consider starting a staffing agency from home.

This can also give you flexibility in expanding into new markets which can make a startup more resilient. If you need someone who knows the Asian marketplace and, say, Mandarin, it’s perfectly reasonable to expand your business that way using a virtual office. 

The cost of attempting this is quite small compared to the more traditional way. Moreover, adopting popular LinkedIn automation tools to attract top-notch experts in any industry can be a real force multiplier.

No leases or risky long-term commitments. Expand as you need and close if you must - at your own convenience. 

To Summarize

Virtual offices are surging in popularity. Big businesses have caught on and they are trying to stay competitive by cutting down the cost of running a business through this tech. Still, the advantage seems to remain with small businesses and startups due to the flexibility and resilience it provides them.

Employees are quickly warming up to the idea of working from home and virtual offices truly enable this perk.

Ultimately, the success of a home-based business relies on your ability to juggle daily tasks and personal life efficiently. For some, this is a liberating, empowering perk, but the true advantage lies in the potential it gives even as your business grows.

People’s priorities can shift from time to time. As they say, life happens. For the most part, people don’t want to quit work no matter what, but moving away for a significant other, a sick family member, injury, and a range of other issues made it difficult to retain a job in the past. 

Nowadays, the choice is not so difficult and you can make it possible for your employees not to have to choose between their personal life and your business, and the same goes for you.

About Nina Petrov

Nina Petrov is a content marketing specialist, passionate about graphic design, content marketing, and the new generation of green and social businesses. She starts the day scrolling her digest on new digital trends while sipping a cup of coffee with milk and sugar. Her white little bunny tends to reply to your emails when she is on vacation.