Virtual Offices...When is an office not an office?

Have you ever stopped to think exactly what an office is? It always has been a physical space; a room, a suite of rooms or a building. It also has a more abstract meaning as a place where we go to work, with both positive and negative connotations.

This article by Gareth Edwards of Virtual HQ Solutions Ltd explores how our definition of an office can both change and stay the same as new collaborative technologies are introduced.

So, what is an Office?

The UK economy has become increasingly services oriented and by the year 2000 over 75% of employment was in the service sector¹. It is a fair bet then that you if you ask someone where they work the answer will be "in an office". They may even tell you that they have an "office job".

We can all accept those responses and understand exactly what people mean. At a general level the reality for office workers is that they;

Probably travel to a particular location, often a large building in a city or town

Have a specific place and set of resources to do their job, for instance a desk, phone, computer and a filing cabinet

Get access to company information, documents, computer systems and business applications

Communicate with co-workers, customers, suppliers and partners to achieve particular tasks, by phone, email, meetings or informally around the coffee machine

It is also pretty easy to understand what an office is from an employer's perspective. For them an office is a productive facility: it's a place to bring resources together to be managed do profitable work. However, it is also represents a cost. They probably pay rent, business rates and a variety of service charges.

But, up until now it has been the only way to operate, so what's changed?

Brave New World

There are all sorts of factors affecting how we work and how businesses operate. Let's start by looking at couple of factors that seem to be particularly important to our perspective on the office: the brave new world of internet technology and the prominence of the SME (Small Medium Size Enterprise).

Internet Technology
As IT and communications have increased, their cost has dramatically decreased. With a PC and broadband connection we can connect with people and services through email, instant messaging, VOIP (Voice Over IP) telephony and a host of other web-based tools. People can readily do business, share information and work on projects with colleagues using these technologies.

Larger organisations have already taken advantage of this situation by allowing some staff to work from home or enabling them to "rove" - using company or other facilities as appropriate. For large companies, the marginal cost of providing remote or dispersed workers with access to the corporate technology infrastructure is relatively low. Corporations have been able to offer "office-like" facilities where location is largely no barrier to doing a job.

SMEs
SMEs account for c.99% of all UK businesses, and since 1999 SMEs have increased their share of total employment by 6%, so that nearly 60% of people in the UK private sector work for a small or medium sized company².

When small businesses are starting-up or in the early stages of growth the main challenges tend to revolve around money. One way to save money has been by working from home to avoid the overhead of office premises and facilities. This has not always been an effective route for small companies. Why? Because they have found that the IT and communications services that they, as SMEs, can access (e.g. email and VOIP) have not, on their own, been able to provide the "office-like" environment that they really need to succeed.

So, how can SMEs acquire the same "office-like" facilities as large organisations, but at a fraction of the cost?

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