Preparations to Jump Ship

Well, of course we are not talking about ships but jobs. 

During the recession many people have been working in jobs that they find unfulfilling or dissatisfying as they should feel 'lucky to have a job'.  Having a steady income and keeping safe during the recession were the priorities.  But now the water has calmed this could be the moment to set a new course by launching a business of your own.

There are many people who are fed up with their unsatisfactory jobs but have always harboured the idea that they could become their own bosses.  This need for independence and the opportunity to control your own destiny is the desire of many.

Unfortunately, with banks making loans unattainable it is difficult to propel yourself into a successful new venture that stands on its own two feet.  You need to continue earn money from your paid employment, whilst you moonlight and generally toil to get your new enterprise up and running.  Equally you may need to prove your concept before handing in your notice.
As Paul Brown of Forbes.com says, entrepreneurs are by nature risk adverse.  They accept risk 'as part of the game and then work extremely hard to reduce it to a minimum'.

We created the Virtual Office® in 1992 for the express purpose of helping budding entrepreneurs start up and succeed in their new enterprises.  We always knew that many start ups fail but our experience over the years has been that by investing in a Virtual Office service most of our clients have gone on to be successful

Why is this?  Because these people looked at what they needed to succeed and paid for the service to make this happen.  The Virtual Office enables people to work in full time paid employment and yet effectively run a parallel operation without distraction during working hours.

Just to be clear a Virtual Office service typically includes the use of our address, all post arrives at our office and is handled as directed.  It is possible to use our rooms for meetings at the same address. This is very discrete and any potential customer will always feel assured that you are a real and trustworthy.

But above all it is our telephone service that makes all the difference.  We have a highly trained group who answer a physical London number in your name (the name of your company).  They also know when you are calling in, and look after you!  Prospective clients feel reassured when a business has more than just a mobile telephone number.  A mobile is a direct link between an individual and another.  The key is that enterprises must show solidity and the reality of a proper organisation in order to grow and succeed.  Of course once contact is made everyone uses their mobiles to talk to each other.  However, the initial experience must be a proper receptionist who knows all about your company when she answers the telephone.

We revel in new start ups.  We want to help new companies succeed and our experience is that we do so.  Over the years we have helped thousands of companies succeed and prosper.  It seems that the key to success is your commitment to building a successful business and being determined to put the right infrastructure behind it from the beginning. Of course we delight when these fledgling enterprises take wing and go off to establish themselves in their own offices.

Author: Richard Nissen, Chairman

© The Virtual Office September 2013

Achieve optimum productivity by reaching 'flow state'

To produce our best work and achieve optimum productivity we need to get into what psychologists call a 'flow state'.

According to positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, flow state is the mental state of a person fully immersed and focused on performing an activity.  

In a working environment flow is likely to occur when you are faced with a task that has clear goals that require specific responses and are given the space to focus entirely on the task.

It takes the average person 15 minutes to reach flow state. As David Coplin of Microsoft UK says when was the last time you had 15 minutes where you weren't distracted by a phone call, email or someone telling you about a cat video on YouTube?

So far it has taken me 2 hours of broken focus to research and write this article.  Emails pop up, clients drop in, telephones ring, stomachs rumble.  There are distractions everywhere.

As such I have decided that all future articles will be researched and written with my email alerts turned off, my calls on divert to the Virtual Office receptionists and with a fresh cup of tea beside me.

I am looking forward to totally immersing myself in a writing and researching. 

However right now I'm distracted by that fresh cup of tea.

My take on an old favourite...

How to Work from Home Successfully

Let me start by saying that working from home is not for everyone. 

I love working from home.  I'm productive, relaxed and really don't miss the commute.  However I speak to people regularly who believe that they would hate it.  They feel that working from home they would lack focus and fear the isolation.  I currently have the best of both worlds.  I work from home and I work from the office.  In fact I believe the majority of people who 's main place of business is home actually spend half their time there.  They spend the other half meeting clients, networking, developing their business; and the increase in drop -in hubs and free networking spaces have made it easier and cheaper to connect and build business relationships.
I will revisit networking and shared spaces in a future blog.  Today I am going to focus on making your working day in the comfort of your home a productive one.

These tips work for me:

Don't feel confined by the 9-5

Everyone has times in the day when they are more motivated.  For me it is the afternoon.  So I plan my day around this.  With all administrative jobs completed, emails sent and washing done in the morning I can concentrate on creative or more involved projects in the afternoon.  I can also decide to leave the project go for a walk or have dinner then come back to it with fresh eyes and new ideas.

You may work best in the morning and be finished on your projects by the afternoon.  Even better as you can then plan your next day, cook dinner or find other ways to fulfil your day. You will be more productive when you are at work if you can also make time for other things.

However...

Set boundaries

If you're not working to a fixed schedule and don't have dinner to cook or kids to collect from school then sometimes there is no natural end to your day.  Too many times you start work early and are still working when you realise it's dark and you've missed your evening.  Then it is often good to set a reminder in your calendar or phone to have a cuppa for a time that you'll definitely want to have finished work by.  If you take that step away from your desk you can then decide whether the project you're working on can wait until the next day.  It normally can.

Break away

It is important to take breaks but it is also important to go outside.  A walk round the park or to the shop not only forces you to get dressed it is also good for your health.  It provides light exercise, improves your vitamin D levels and will help you clear your head making you more productive when you return to your desk.  Constantly putting in long hours without break is draining and damages long term productivity.  More importantly it damages your health.  A change of scenery will do you good and make you happier.

And that's it.  Nothing that will make headlines.  Just a gentle reminder to us all that working hard doesn't mean being chained to your desk.  It means working to your strengths. Keeping yourself happy and healthy will help in every area of life. Simple.

The ongoing Flexible working debate

There has always been resistance to flexible working with the majority of businesses preferring to keep employees within their sights.

Earlier this year a ban on remote working at Yahoo reignited the flexible working debate.
The arguments are the same but the strength of opinion is different. With the explosion of social technologies and the ease of remote working many are anxious about losing creative impromptu moments between colleagues. Charlie Mullins, founder of Pimlico Plumbers, feels that in a fast-moving, entrepreneurial society, we cannot afford to live without the face-to-face interaction that drives business.

However during preparation for London 2012 many companies decided to embrace flexible working as a viable option for their business. Telecommunications company O2 have moved their teams' working week away from traditional offices.
According to employee Darren Farmer people from all areas of the company are now working away from the office at least one day a week. In his article 'Flexible working one year on' he states that the biggest thing that any company looking at flexible working needs to consider is a behavioural change. I have discussed in the past the level of trust required by an employer to commit to home working. It is not just investments in technology to ensure you can still be collaborative and productive. It's about encouraging a feeling of ownership in your employees. As Darren says 'it’s all about output, not where you are. I know what constitutes me doing my job, and it’s up to me to make sure it’s done wherever I am'.

SMEs are more likely to encourage autonomy. They have entrusted their business dream to their staff so have developed more personal relationships. The result is a belief that the work will be produced speedily. Staff in return want to produce the best quality output possible to ensure the trust remains.
Essentially flexible working should be just that. Flexible. It doesn't mean always working at home with no face to face interaction with colleagues or suppliers. It means working in a flexible way to benefit the business.

Increased employee motivation and reduced premises costs are beneficial. However, ultimately, the biggest benefit is the business reaching optimal quality and productivity.

The Unexpected Side Effects of Swine Flu - On Businesses

If Swine Flu turns out to be the pandemic predicted by officials and journalists alike, then be prepared to see incredible alterations to life as we know it.

It is suspected that as many as half of London’s seven million inhabitants could catch swine flu and that 94,000 could die in a worst case scenario. If the virus proves itself as communicable and if it evolves to be less reactive to the anti-viral treatments being used to keep it at bay presently, then many lives will be at risk, not just in the capital, but around the world.

Employers do have a duty of care to ensure that their employees are kept as safe as possible from any threat to their health or well-being. There is lots of buzz at the moment about the adoption of teleworking on a much grander scale across the business world in order to minimize the amount of time people will have to spend in close proximity and hopefully aid in slowing or eliminating the spread of the virus. Also, with nearly half of employees expected to take at least two weeks off of work over the coming months due to personal illness or to care for a friend or family member, working from home may become a necessary part of everyday operations for most companies. It is suspected that if the flu spreads as is predicted, then workplaces and schools alike can be expected to be shut for long periods of time. Many businesses will need business support networks to cope with this reality as they become more and more dependant on teleworking.

With so many employees set to be displaced from main office headquarters, a Virtual Office can help you to maintain a unified front and provide personalised telephone answering and call forwarding to employees no matter where they happen to be working from. A single telephone number for your company and the ability to reach any of the employees helps keep communication simple for you and your clients if much of your operations are switched to a virtual office concept.

Though the prognosis may be upsetting, it is still best to be prepared to continue business as closely to normal as possible throughout the next few months because much as there is no guarantee that we will make it out of this episode unscathed, there is also no guarantee that doomsday is upon us just yet.