Serviced office or virtual office – what’s best for you?
The word ‘office’ sometimes has slightly unpleasant connotations. People tend to associate it with hard work and long hours away from home. An office doesn’t need to be this way, but anywhere that somebody works is likely to feel a bit less than fun after not very long. If you want to get the most out of your working hours it’s best to do them somewhere you feel at ease.
In the past you only really had one choice if you had a small team of staff that needed a workplace: you hired an office out. But increasingly this is looking less and less attractive to businesses. The structure is too rigid and too rooted in the past.
If that makes business ownership sound a little bit bleak don’t despair. There are now two new options that you can choose in place of a traditional office environment. These are the serviced office and the virtual office.
A serviced office is similar to the traditional office in that it is somewhere you travel to work. It differs in that instead of providing the equipment and up-keep yourself, you hire it from a bespoke company who hire out complete offices. Generally, it will be on shorter contract than a traditional office, and will be fully furnished with a luxury interior.
So what’s best about a serviced office? Well for one thing it affords you a lot more flexibility than a traditional office. The contracts are shorter, so that gives you the chance to move on quickly if you find you need somewhere different. No hassle with leases, and no worries about having to move your whole operation.
A serviced office might be best for you if you are still looking to keep a traditional office environment, but would prefer more options when it comes to expanding. For example serviced offices are great if you are looking to move to a new location. It gives you the opportunity to work in the area to test it out without the huge financial implications if you decide it’s not right for you.
A virtual office differs more from a traditional office than the serviced office does. A virtual office generally implies that you’ll do your work mainly from home or another location, but hire a company to use some of services of a traditional office.
It gives you a great business address at a fraction of the cost of hiring a rented office in a city location. The mail just gets re-directed to you. You can also get personalised call-handling that means you won’t have to have a dedicated member of staff to deal with it constantly.
There are excellent points to both, and you can’t really go wrong with either option. Both provide excellent flexibility to be able to adapt to how well business is going. Both are undoubtedly more cost-effective than hiring a traditional office on a long contract. Both offer a very practical alternative to the traditional office. They both make sense, but only you will know what’s right for your business.
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