Best Buy: Succeeding in a Virtual Office Environment

As someone who has always gone into the office each day and values face to face contact I have  been somewhat skeptical about whether a virtual office is viable. I understand the benefits of expanding your labor pool and attracting/retaining talent that wants more flexible work hours, but I have trouble grasping how it all operates. After reading this article on Yahoo! about the success of Best Buy's virtual office, my skepticism is quickly fading. Highlights are as follows:

Virtual Office is Becoming More Prevalent in the Fortune 1000

• At IBM, 40% of the workforce has no official office;
• At AT&T, a third of managers are untethered.
• Sun Microsystems Inc. calculates that it's saved $400 million over six years in real estate costs by allowing nearly half of all employees to work anywhere they want

Best Buy's ROWE ("results-only work environment,") Virtual Office Program

• The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours.
• No schedules and no mandatory meetings
• Productivity is up an average 35% in departments that have switched to ROWE.
• Employee engagement, which measures employee satisfaction and is often a barometer for retention, is way up too, according to the Gallup Organization

Comments

[Connie Smith]

In deed, work-at-home plans seem to be taking off. Envision is hosting a virtual roundtable discussion, an Envision Exchange, about this topic on January 30th and we've had an outstanding response from contact center directors and managers. Perhaps home-based agents are the wave of the future?

[Video Conferencing]

Really like this post on Succeeding in a Virtual Office Environment.

[virtual office]

A virtual office is typically a managed telephone answering or email response service that receives and routes telephone or email messages on behalf of a small business and may provide some initial scripted response to a query. The business that uses this service typically does not have fixed office premises or employ regular reception or customer contact staff and so it provides a means of receiving and passing on calls and messages when not available to deal with a customer inquiry.

Margarette Smith

[new balance]

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for circumstances they want , and if they cannot find them .they make them.

[ashleyashley]

Virtual offices can offer everything an actual office provides without leasing or renting the actual office space. With the increase in people working from home, and the creation of a virtual office environment, there is also an increase in the need for virtual office tools such as http://www.timedoctor.com/blog/2011/01/19/virtual-office-software
Virtual office tools are very useful to many businesses, no matters whether it is small or big.