Virtual Workplace: The Why and the Where to

With this article, we are starting off a series of articles targeting what has now become known as the Virtual Workplace. What does this fancy name stand for, what drove its existence? What are the challenges it will face, and what advantages would it offer, among other items we will be discussing here.

As a start, let us kick off this series by defining what virtual workplaces are, why they came into existence, and where they are heading to.

With the growth of competition and globalization, and the increased cost of local employees, high profit organizations are forced to expand their business internationally to keep the edge over bigger and more profitable international companies that are entering local markets with few barriers. This type of expansion has created virtual workplaces, where employees are not located in one physical space, rather in several workplaces that are connected through technology to each other without regard to geographic boundaries.

The virtual workplace was also a response to the increased use of information technology in operations, customer demands, costs of office space and commuting, and the growing numbers of workers’ spending more time in the field, interacting with customers, business partners, and collaborators and spending less time in traditional offices.

In virtual workplaces, employees are able to communicate with each other wherever they are located, and the organization as a whole is able to integrate the technology process, the online processes, and the people processes.

According to virtual working statistics provided by Davinci Virtual Office Solutions – a provider of virtual support solutions for businesses worldwide servicing over 8,000 virtual office clients – in a recent report dating July 2011, more than two-thirds of U.S. workers are engaged in some virtual work, 46% engage in virtual work at least once a week and 14% do so daily. The vast majority of them (91%) agree that virtual work saves their companies time and money (original article here)

According to these statistics, and as an international response, a variety of tools and technologies were developed, and we will see much more being developed, that will give us new capabilities, functionalities, and potential in the virtual workplace. We will also see increased implementation of virtual workplaces by entrepreneurs that find in it everything necessary to run a business in a professional setting, including a permanent mailing address, phone number and call answering, coupled with on-demand meeting rooms, administrative support and business services.

In addition, the virtual workplace will increase dramatically the outsourcing of employees, the number of online jobs posted, and in the number of people with a second life online business, which they will do after work.

In the next article of this series, we will see what the challenges of a virtual workplace would be.

What are your thoughts, are virtual workplaces the future?

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