It’s simple nowadays to set up a remote office for the day. To learn more about it, read further on for helpful insight.
With on-and-off lockdowns, shifting requirements, and an uncertain future, we’ve all learned to place much greater importance on employee flexibility and adaptability. Learning to adjust to your environment and make do with the circumstances you are given is crucial for survival, both for yourself and for your team.
But when uncertainty becomes the norm, it’s time to develop a few workspace strategies to deploy on-the-fly. Part of that includes a sure-fire way to access the ideal remote workspace, whenever and wherever you might need it.
Say you need a remote office for the day. What factors do you heed the most? Likely cost, location, and amenities.
The Limitations of Working from Home
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that most office teams still operate well while remote, and some people even seem to enjoy a productivity boost from working from home.
But it has also taught us that there are many who cannot work from home, whether due to a litany of distractions, or due to the isolation and lack of work-life balance that comes from answering emails in bed at 11 p.m.
Working from home is the most convenient solution to an emergency remote setup. Instead of driving to the office, just boot up your laptop, log into the company cloud, and manage your tasks from the comfort of your own bedroom, study, or living room.
But there are quite a few challenges for workers stuck at home for longer periods of time. They feel isolated and removed from company culture. They may struggle to remain productive while facing distractions at home. They have a hard time managing their time and schedule while stuck indoors, waking up at odd hours, working deep into the night, getting started late, and failing to commit to a healthy routine.
Some employees thrive while working from home. They might ask for more time spent at home, or even to fully commit themselves to the home office. But it certainly isn’t for everyone.
That doesn’t mean remote work is inherently flawed. But it’s all about increasing your scope of what it might mean to work remotely – and tapping into alternative workspaces.
Quick Access Remote Offices and Satellite Workspaces
Instead of skipping the long commute to work, consider a much shorter trip to the nearest coworking space.
Coworking spaces and similar remote office setups charge weekly or monthly, with none of the annual commitments you’ve come to expect with office space leases, and none of the overhead costs associated with getting an office ready before your team can use it.
If you have team members in different cities, states, or countries, you can use coworking spaces as a remote option or as a satellite workspace to seat them in a productive workplace environment.
Most importantly, coworking spaces have adapted to the pandemic with air filters, stringent contact tracing, daily testing, vaccination check-in, frequent deep cleans, and other measures designed to reduce the risk of contagion.
Brainstorming and Networking
One of the major limitations of working from home is losing access to human contact. A remote office setup necessarily eliminates the possibility of working together in the same room, but it doesn’t rule out contact with other people. Coworking spaces are an ideal location to brainstorm new ideas, network with people from different industries, make new friends, and form professional connections.
More than just benefiting you professionally, however, the human touch also plays an important mental role in creating a productive environment. We’re social creatures after all, and while there are times when we prefer to work alone and times when we need to work together, it’s important to have the option to begin with.
Coworking spaces often do not have dedicated workstations, but instead allow tenants to fluidly pick the spaces they need to work in today, whether that’s in a meeting room, a concentration room, a common area, the balcony outside, or at a joint table.
Furthermore, when we need a break from work, coworking spaces give us an opportunity to socialize with human beings for once – rather than our pets. Never underestimate the creative benefits of being around other people, even with proper social distancing.
Collaboration and Presentation
Remote teams have grown rapidly in the age of COVID as companies embrace hiring talent from all around the country to expand their hiring pool, and unlock new potential. Sometimes, that means hiring a few people in one city, and a few more in the next.
Remote workspaces like coworking spaces become the perfect venue for these mini-teams to work together in-person, while collaborating remotely with the greater team at large – like a hub-and-spoke model, where multiple smaller offices coordinate with the headquarters at the center.
Important Services and Amenities
Nothing beats coffee and a good breakfast at home. But when it comes to professional amenities, most home offices are sorely lacking. It’s quite expensive to fully deck out an office with all the equipment you might need to do your best work.
Coworking spaces, on the other hand, put quite a lot of time and money into an optimized work environment. They take into account green design and its effects on productivity, efficient use of natural light, furniture choice, color, and artwork selection.
Furthermore, coworking spaces are equipped with high-speed connectivity, meeting rooms to entertain clients, frequent cleaning services, a business address, and good coffee.
Get a Remote Office Today!
The ideal one-day-setup remote office must be somewhere accessible, affordable, with access to everything you need to do your work – whether that includes an array of printers and fax machines or, more likely, high-speed internet and an espresso machine. And, most importantly, it can’t be company HQ.
Coworking spaces fulfill these requirements, giving you an alternative workspace for your team when HQ is full, or when you don’t have one to begin with. They’re the ideal solution for smaller businesses and startups trying to save costs during the pandemic.