People have more options than ever before in a quickly changing environment. They can even choose where they want to work. Local work is done at a location stipulated by an employer. This is usually an office space where face-to-face communication is the norm.
Working from home allows professionals to work outside of the traditional office setting. They can work from home, a co-working place, or a coffee shop. Loads of free and paid tools for team communication, CRMs, emailing, conferences, etc. are available to ensure smooth running of processes in companies.
Local Office vs Remote Team – The Advantages
1. Cost savings
The greatest benefit of a remote team over a local office team for a business is the cost savings. They can save a lot of money on real estate, office space, utility expenditures like gas, electricity, water, as well as executive travel. In comparison, the expenditures of running a virtual team are minimal. A part of office expenses can be invested in subscriptions for the SaaS tools to function remotely.
2. Leverage Global Talent
Remote Teams enable companies to explore for talent outside of their own nation. This invites experts and specialists from all around the world together to collaborate on the project. Individuals from around the world share their understanding of global and local markets, as well as best business practices, which leads to increased knowledge exchange and greater creativity.
3. Increased Productivity & Higher Profits
Members in virtual teams are more likely to concentrate on the task at hand. Virtual teams, in practice, support a flatter organizational structure. Members are not burdened by needless bureaucracy unlike in a local office settings, which slows down decision-making. This boosts productivity, which translates to larger revenues.
4. Reduced Time to Market
Because the participants are spread across time zones in a remote team, there may be multiple teams working on the same project at the same time, so while one member sleeps, another will pick up where the former left off. This reduces the time it takes to develop a product or deliver a service as well as the time it takes to respond to demand in both global and local markets.
Local Office vs Remote Team – The Limitations
1. Cost of Technology
The efficient use of different communication technologies such as instant messaging, emails, and video-conferencing, among others, supports the successful working of a remote team. There is no single tool that can provide total support. The cost of these installation and maintenance items is a little more than average. Unlike in an office setting where there is an internal system for communication which is typically less expensive to setup.
2. Conflicts, Lack of Trust & Collaboration
Conflicts arise as a result of cultural differences between members of virtual teams. For example, whereas an American might send a plain email detailing a negative scenario, a South Asian (say, Japanese) member of the team might consider this impolite. This may result in disagreements, mistrust, and difficulty in productive collaboration, which is so important for virtual team success. These difficulties are exacerbated by the lack of nonverbal clues that are so important in face-to-face encounters and which a local location office provides.
3. Social Isolation
The lack of physical interaction has a negative impact on many members of virtual teams. In a virtual setting, the majority of communication is task-oriented. In today’s age, where work is a major social force for most of us because many of our co-workers are also close friends, this can lead to a negative sense of social isolation. This, in turn, has a negative impact on productivity and causes stress.
Summary
To sum it up, when virtual offices have proved to be efficient and cost effective for companies; on an individual or employee level it depends upon interest and circumstances if they are happy working in-office or virtually.