The popularity of serviced offices has been phenomenal in recent years. In fact in 2013, Karen Overbury of The Journal wrote, with a strong rate of growth, “serviced offices is most likely the fastest-growing sector of the European and global property market.”
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You’ve got an impending meeting. The outcome of the meeting is likely to have a significant impact on your business, so naturally you want everything to run smoothly and the meeting to be a success.
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‘Location, location, location’. The estate agents love to tell us, when it comes to buying real estate, it’s all about location.
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“Sign here on the dotted line please Sir?” To which the company director fervently signs, ecstatic he has finally got proper business premises and his company really is going places!
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It’s no secret, the number of people working at home and from remote locations is rapidly escalating.
As the Office for National Statistics (ONS) prove, in the first three months of 2013, approximately 13.9% of the UK workforce worked from home offices, the highest number since records began in 1998.
As our blog about how technology is changing the way we work specifies, technology such as Cloud has made homeworking a reality. Despite the unprecedented growth of home working, an office within a home-based setting has limitations.
A Virtual Office is designed to combat the limitations of a home office. Whilst the advantages of a virtual office are fairly blatant and undisputed – namely giving a business a professional address and subsequently a more specialised image – it is safe to say there are several features of virtual offices that remain significantly less recognised and celebrated.
If you are deliberating joining the thousands of SMEs and professionals in their pursuit to take their company and working ventures to new elevated levels by getting a virtual office, take a look at some features of this increasingly popular working practice, you may not realise you need.
A company’s post piling up at home isn’t particularly conducive to professionalism. Nor is failing to be in to collect an important parcel or letter. A Virtual Office immediately eradicates such potential problems.
Virtual Offices, such as WorkWell’s Virtual Office, include unlimited post as part of the package. Ensuring all letters and parcels are picked up and collected in a professional manner will not only mean a crucial company letter isn’t chewed up by the family dog never to be seen again, but will also be collected in a professional manner, heightening the credibility of your company.
How many times do you get interrupted, your trail of though lost, by the phone ringing? You might not realise it but when you have your own Virtual Office you will have the privilege of having a professional receptionist answer your calls.
Delegating the essential, if not mundane, task of having someone else pick up your phone calls will mean you can enjoy an uninterrupted day’s work and concentrate on elements that will ultimately make your business grow.
The same ‘professional enhancing’ principle of having a receptionist professional deal with your post can be applied to the unlimited phone calls that users of Virtual Offices can take advantage of. With a receptionist answering your calls and either forwarding them to you or to your answering machine will not only mean you can get on with more pressing components of running a business but it will also mean you never miss a call.
Whilst Virtual Offices are predominantly centred on giving businesses the professionalism of having a glamorous address, as well as phone call and mail forwarding services, it can be equally as beneficial to many SMEs and freelancers to have a desk they can use.
For example, Carrwood Park’s co-working spaces enable workers to reap the benefits of having a professional office desk, namely access to fast Wi-Fi, IT support, and the buzz, banter and networking opportunities life in an office offers.
Such vital modern working elements are essential in driving a business forward and nurturing success.
So business is picking up and whilst it was once sufficient to conduct client meetings in a local Starbuck’s, with your company rapidly progressing, you require a more professional, well-facilitated and easy-to-access meeting room.
Once upon a time you might not have realised you would be needing a meeting room but as your business grows so does the need to hire a professional, well-facilitated meeting room.
Take advantage of Carrwood Park’s meeting rooms, which being just 15 minutes from Leeds City Centre and two minutes from the M1, means your guests can show up and enjoy a professional meeting in the most stylish of environments.
Estate agents love to say it but the popular phrase ‘location, location, location’ is being adopted by virtual offices.
The location of an office, virtual or not, is important for several reasons. With a desirable and professional-sounding business address, clients, potential clients, outsourced and others are likely to view your business venture with greater credibility.
What’s more, using an office that is located in a stylish building, on the outskirts of a large city or town with convenient access and free parking, will not only be more convenient for you to use but will be easier for clients to visit.
If you have any further questions or would like to arrange a viewing or book a Virtual Office at WorkWell, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Long gone are the days when one serviced office looked almost identical to the next, with clusters of workstations nestled together defining one team from another and doing little to nurture cross-department collaboration.
Today flexibility is at the core of modern working ethics and none more so than when it comes to office layout. As we wrote about in our blog titled ‘What type of Office Space Layout is the Most Productive?’ design experts generally believe a mix of spaces is preferable as diverse office layouts and design will “suit various individuals and teams who are working on different tasks.”
While a diversely laid out office might be ideal to, as Google says, “create many different places so people can be as productive as possible,” not all businesses have the resources and funds to create such an eclectic mix of office space.
Besides, there are certain types of office layouts that are more suitable and productivity-enhancing for specific types of business.
Take a look at the Carrwood Park guide on how different business types require different serviced office layouts. You can then use our guide to help you decide which office layout is best for your business.
The main types of office layouts are:
As we stated in our previous office layout blog, open-plan offices are gathering momentum, and are currently the preferred method of 70% of offices in the United States.
Open-plan offices involve everyone working in one big room that is void of dividers and everyone mixes and works under the same roof. Meeting rooms and conference rooms are often located on the outer walls in this type of office environment.
As the BBC writes, this “new type” of open-plan office “encouraged disclosure, discussion and debate” and can even help businesses reduce overheads.
“Managers were mixed in with the masses, cutting down on the expense of managerial offices and allowing organisations to manage their workforce more flexibly.”
As this type of office design is a creative environment, open-plan offices are great for creative businesses, such as design companies or digital agencies, which often require the use of an open-plan layout to nurture communication among employees.
Citing the downsides of an open-plan office layout, namely being noisy and germ-rendering environments, Inc.com believes a better solution would be an office that provides and mixture of open and closed spaces.
This type of office has places where people can work alone but can be seen and accessible to colleagues and a place where different teams can potentially work together.
“By mixing open and closed spaces, offices can glean the benefits of open designs – a symbolic sense of mission, a laid-back feeling of innovative enterprise – without the noisy and potentially unhealthy drawbacks,” writes Inc.com.
Cubicle farm-style offices are comprised of partitioned rows of spaces which are separated by dividers that only reach halfway up to the ceiling. The partitioned spaces are usually separated by aisles, designed for communication and negotiation amongst staff. It is important to remember that traffic flow needs to be considered in this type of office layout which is designed for a large number of workers. Aisles, particularly central aisles, need to be wide enough to accommodate traffic flow and employees passing one another.
These cubicles are typically equipped with a computer and phone line. Sometimes there is just one worker per cubicle, but often two or three employees share a cubicle.
Cubicle Farms are most suitable for firms with high volumes of middle management, such as call centres, in which managers can mix and be of assistance to staff with ease.
By the same token, a row layout office is also effective for call centres and businesses where employees spend their day on computers and phones. The Row Layout design is a traditional type of office space which comprises cubicles lined up in rows.
As the Small Business Chronicle points out, the row layout can be appealing to many businesses due to the ease of assembly and the fact it doesn’t require extensive planning. As with the cubicle farm layout, the rows are often segregated by high dividers to give workers privacy.
In its paper about different office layouts, the James Hilton Academy describes the Cellular layout as being offices that are made up of smaller individual rooms in which a small number of employees work.
In this type of office individuals or small teams can be isolated by closing a door.
Any business which requires staff to work routinely in a private setting is likely to be most suited to a cellular setup. For example, a law firm which requires individual rooms for lawyer and client confidentiality would require a cellular layout.
Businesses that rely on teamwork between colleagues and creative, spontaneous collaboration such as creative agencies would not be suited to this traditional type of office layout.
The choice of your office design should not be taken lightly. Get it right and an office can be a vital tool in sparking creativity and nurturing productivity. Get it wrong and your employees and ultimately your clients are likely to suffer.
Enjoy this blog? Why not read our other post ‘Setting up your office for maximum productivity’
For flexible, stylish and professional serviced offices in Leeds and Harrogate, get in touch with WorkWell.
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