The Ideal Office, Your Office Agent

The office of the Future is where companies balance cost reduction and employee efficiency with increased flexibility in both Workforce and Workplace.  Until now it was difficult for corporations to increase worker productivity, efficiency and well-being while decreasing personnel and real estate costs. Today there are agile workplace solutions which aim to find a solution to this age old problem by focusing on the following:

• Minimize real estate portfolios.
• Implement a mobile workforce strategy.
• Eliminate excess real estate or mothballed space.

It is seldom that we sound our own horn but the team here at Your Office Agent has resources to allow corporations to align fiscal objectives and workforce productivity with real estate, workplace and agile working needs.  With new technologies empowering employees to work virtually and remotely, and collaborate securely from anywhere, the cost of maintaining and operating the workplace can decrease, while productivity increases. Indeed, both HR and Admin costs have been shown to decrease, along with facilities costs, as employees become more mobile, while 60% of reduced commute time is typically used by employees for work.

Technology, sensors and analytics are applied to quantitatively determine a company’s specific officing requirement. Smart working techniques, such as hot desking, teleworking, hoteling, reverse hoteling, etc. are used to reduce the workspace that each employee needs by up to 50%. Your Office Agent also partners with the leading space efficiency implementers in this industry to make this agile working process seamless. The most important of these partners is Satellite Telework Centers, the only automated telework center network in the world.  These telework centers are ideally positioned to be implemented with little capital expenditure, no balance sheet liability and an ongoing cost that is typically less than companies can operate at themselves. Together, Your Office Agent and Satellite can set up fully automated, fully systemized, secure offsite workspace centers of any size to fit a mobile and dispersed workforce — or provide flexible seats at existing ones. Satellite is able to offer 24/7 access for each site’s members through its automated systems and technology, reducing commutes and CO2 emissions, while making space available near workers’ homes on the schedules they need. For many workers who have no appropriate space at home, these centers make teleworking, and its cost-saving, productivity and environmental benefits, possible.

As corporations globalize, the challenges of implementing a mobile workforce strategy can also be addressed with a new offering from the specialist team.  Your Office Agent’s solutions solve the worker productivity and IT security needs by offering centers throughout the world with plug in, collaborative and stand alone spaces, allowing employees to use their own laptops, hardware and security software.  A tailored solution is incorporated using Your Office Agent’s online network of 40,000 drop in spaces to map workforce needs to all available workplace inventories. Business analytics is now merged with a powerful, flexible real estate platform to align corporate initiatives with the perfect officing solutions.

The result of aligning a company’s business plan with their facility plan will inevitably be a significant reduction in space needs and increase in excess corporate space. Again, YOA can help turn this into revenue rather than cost by offering corporations a resource to eliminate excess real estate or mothballed space by helping incorporate a managed space model for other companies to rent or collaborate on a flexible basis.

This is one of the few office of the future blogs that we can’t score because we may have a slight bias but one thing is for sure.  The old brick and mortar outdated concept of low value commercial real estate advice and corporate large office solutions are gone, and companies of tomorrow need to have solutions available today. With today’s technologies and productivity tools workers can collaborate in real time, address business initiatives and move those initiatives to completion in workspaces that promote a better quality of life and allow for increased productivity.  Your Office Agent is uniquely positioned to collaboratively harness the needs of corporations, real estate firms, coworking companies and individuals into a shared platform to reduce costs and find the best workspace solutions.

A virtual office combines  address services with off-site technological communications enabling people to  lessen their overhead costs while still managing to keep business  professionalism intact. Not all people have the cash to fund and maintain a  traditional office; therefore, a virtual office can provide you with a  professional business address cutting down on your office expenses and at the  same time ensuring that you effectively run your business.

Today, there are now a number  of companies offering professional virtual office services, from the big  executive suites such as Regus to the newer and trendier coworking locations  such as WeWork.  With all the options inbetween there are thousands of options  from as little at $39 a month all over the world. These  companies will focus on jump-starting your business as soon as possible, while  you concentrate on strategies to promote and grow it. If you are a start-up,  setting up the virtual office can be done almost instantly. No need to worry  about office leases and rental rates since the premise of working in a central  office has been eliminated. Moreover, you won’t ever have to be bothered by the  morning rush since you don’t need to commute to your office. You and your  employees will have access to the virtual office by simply connecting to the  internet. That said, you can do your work even while on the go. Furthermore, you  work at your own pace and you make your own work schedule, thus lessening  work-related stress.

Getting professional virtual  office services from a reputable company will definitely be to your advantage.  Professional virtual office service companies employ experienced, multi-tasking  staff who are equipped to handle the needs of their clients. They will be the  one taking messages or handling calls for you, it is like you have your own  professional secretary but the difference is that you are only expected to pay for the services you use.In case the  secretary falls ill you won’t have to worry about the medical bills that would  be the problem of the virtual office company.

Aside from having someone to  take phones calls and messages for you, it is also important that you have a  professional city address where you can receive your mail and package deliveries when necessary. By using a virtual office service, you will also be provided  with a virtual business address, which will give your company a more  professional and prestigious feel.

There are over 1 billion mobile workers in the world today according to statistics from International data Corp and this number is due to rise to 1.3 Billion by 2015. This means that many more people are working from home, more companies are having to change their culture to reflect these new work style choices and the workplace of today looks or feels nothing like it used to. The visible impact of all this workplace change is that the coffee shops are filling up and this is a sign that we all still need some form of human interaction to keep moving forward in this new business world of ours.

Here is the question though. Have we gone from bad to worse? How great is it really to work in a coffee shop with the noise, the music, the people listening to our conversations. Surely there has to be a better way. The good news is that there is a better way, but only for those in the know. Over the last 5 years an industry has been growing at over 40% annually, while the rest of the world has seen falling production and output. This industry is the flexible office and meeting room space market and comprises of a growing number of international, national and local executive suite, coworking and bespoke meeting room venues who are catering to the mobile workforce. Not only are these workspace emporiums providing the exact solutions that companies and individuals need but they are doing it for less than the coffee cost in Starbucks.

So who are these providers of the workplace of the future. The biggest one is Regus business centers who now have over 1,300 locations worldwide and with their business world card you can get access to their business lounges for under $30 a month. This is on average less than the price of one Starbucks coffee per day for a workspace, unlimited coffee and filtered water, free wifi access and the pleasure of being surrounded by other people doing business rather than buying a cappuccino. Premier business centers also offer 16 hours meeting room access a month for their mailbox clients for $50. That’s $3.00 an hour for a boardroom. Coworking Spaces like Blank Spaces or WeWork allow access to desk space for $20 to $30 a day, where you are surrounded by other companies who are all encouraged the network and refer business to each other and if you look hard enough you can use this space for free in many locations. It is impossible to mention every option because there are over 10,000 around the world and all offer office and meeting rooms by the hour, day or month in an environment that works for your business. Your office Agent exist to educate companies for free about smarter ways to work and then guide you to the best one. This is the future of work.

As always we are going to have to rank the coffee shop though based on the same 6 criteria as usual out of a maximum score of 5 points for each criteria: