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Virtual Workspace- a Boon or a Bane:
Advantages:
A brick and mortar place, where you stepped, organized your desk alongside your colleague, had meeting around a round table, waited for the break to have a sip of coffee, it is a vintage world now, traveling for hours to be at a place. Welcoming the new virtual workspace, a place that has no physical boundaries and connects you all around the globe, technologically.
A place, where you can step in, organize, have meetings and work. But is it so? Is virtual workspace really a blessing? Just like every coin has two coins, you never know what you get when it is tossed, a virtual workspace has its own reasons to be praised and blamed.
Advantages
1) Cost Elimination:
The fixed and variable costs of having a physical place include many things such as rent of the premises, the cost of furniture and fixtures, lightning and other charges of electricity consuming appliances like AC, refrigerator, clean water supply and other utilities like office snacks etc. They all can be eliminated once the workspace becomes virtual, where all they need is internet connectivity. This can lead to increase in profits and employee loyalty.
2) Time Saving:
Employees save travel time, they can minimize wasting time for breaks in between reducing tiredness and thus the productivity increases. Also, they can work for longer hours. The time taken for unproductive activities like gossiping can be minimized. Also, they don’t have to worry as to being far away in emergency situations at home.
3) No geographical boundaries:
The organizations can hire employees from anywhere based on their talents, skills and experience. The candidate pool can be highly skilled. They don’t have to worry to recruit only people who can commute easily to physical spaces. So, they can hire the best!
4) Flexibility:
Virtual workspace helps employees better manage their time by being flexible in their errands. Therefore, they can better manage their work life and personal life. They become happier and satisfied.
5) Benefits to Environment:
Working in virtual workspace means less cars on road, less cutting of grasslands for building spaces, less need for paper and thus helps in saving environment as well.
Disadvantages -
1) Home interruptions:
While working in a virtual space from home, interruptions from family, internet connectivity issues and family conditions can effect employee mental health. Some employees prefer to work in physical spaces.
2) Reduced interaction:
When the work is carried by technological means, human interactions are reduced hence, the social life and needs can be interrupted. Also, when people work together, they perform better. Social isolation can be a big disadvantage of virtual workplace.
3) Cyber-crimes:
The more technology is used, the more the information becomes vulnerable. If everything is carried in a virtual space, there will be viruses, hackers, and malware waiting to disrupt and steal information. The information that is virtually circulated can be altered with easily. Therefore the organizations will have to incur safety costs, an additional overhead.
4) Difficulty in Controlling:
The controlling activities taken by firms like recording active hours, employee movements etc. can be difficult to manage when everything is done virtually. This can affect the degree of coordination and can provide with unreliable statistics.
5) Lack of trust:
The customers believe that the possibility of brick and mortar place getting vanished overnight is less as compared to virtual work space. Therefore, customers can be easily shifted to competitors thus the organizations find it difficult to retain customers. Virtual workspace can be both a boon and a bane. Its advantages and disadvantages should be compared and the most suitable option should be relied upon.
Written by - Rashi Jain
Edited by - Nidhi Verma
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