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Coronavirus Encourages Virtual Workspaces & Remote Working

The threat of the Coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic is steadily growing in the United States and as a result, many companies have turned to order their employees to work remotely. As this continues many companies face the challenge of reframing their business protocols and processes. The increasing uncertainty and anxiety about the personal dangers from the potential pandemic and its impact on the economy will make the challenge of adjusting to these work changes even greater.

For example, the social media platform Twitter has encouraged its employees to work from home to do their part in preventing the spread of the virus. Other companies such as the tech giant Google and investment bank JP Morgan are also amongst the companies currently exercising remote working protocols for safety. While only a third of people in the U.S. currently work remotely, this sudden shift may be a taste of what experts predict that in the year 2025, 70% of workers will be working remotely. If you want to learn more about remote & virtual solutions, Schedule a Free Consultation Now.

A global poll from 2018 by data and insights company Kantar found that of 33,000 people, 32% valued a job where they could work from home. Joe Hirsh, a leadership and communication expert, told CNBC that he believed the outbreak of the coronavirus has the potential to make working from home more common practice. He argued that if more companies follow in the footsteps of Twitter and Google, this could “shift workplace dynamics.” Jon Addison, vice president of talent solutions EMEA at LinkedIn, agreed that businesses would inevitably find it more challenging to continue with “business as usual” under the current circumstances if they lack the technology infrastructure to work remotely or flexible working policies. For some, he said, the coronavirus outbreak could act as a “wake-up call” to enact this change. He said that working from home could actually prove advantageous for certain tasks, such as those which require “deep focus or privacy due to the sensitive nature of what’s being worked on.”

As more and more companies are following suit in asking their employees to work from home, some may worry that they are not equipped to handle such a change despite the necessity. Fortunately, many systems and programs already exist and have been around, being utilized by those businesses and companies where remote, virtual and outsourced staff is not by any means new. Many platforms are offering free access in light of the Coronavirus outbreak while many others have free account options already available.

Cisco’s WebEx, for example, reported that traffic on its backbone connecting China-based Webex users has increased by 22 times since the outbreak began. At the same time, it’s seen four to five times as many users in Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, with the average time spent on Webex video meetings doubling among users in those countries. Simultaneously, free signup rates in countries with infections have increased by 700% or more.

If you are setting up systems for your team and or business to prepare for the possibility of having to work remotely, here are some options you may want to look into:

Cisco WebEx

Long-time conferencing service WebEx’s default-free plan offers you conferencing for up to three users with HD video, screen sharing on desktop and mobile devices, and limited recording options. It supports up to 50 participants per meeting, with meeting times capped at 40 minutes and online storage limited to 1GB.

With its special, Webex is offering unlimited usage with no time restrictions, support for up to 100 participants, and toll-call dial-in in addition to existing VoIP capabilities. This offer is being made with a free 90-day license to businesses that are not already Webex customers.

Google Hangouts Meet

Google, with 8,000 employees in Ireland, has already put its remote working conferencing to the test when it asked for all staffers to work from home for fear of possible coronavirus infection. Google isn’t offering free conferencing services to new users, but it is rolling out free access to its advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all its G Suite and G Suite for Education customers. This includes larger meetings, for up to 250 participants per call live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain; and the ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive.

These features are typically available in the Enterprise edition of G Suite and in G Suite Enterprise for Education, but they will be available at no additional cost to all customers until July 1, 2020.

LogMeIn GoToMeeting

LogMeIn is another experienced video conferencing company that usually comes with a 14-day free trial. Now, according to the company, starting immediately, it will provide critical front-line service providers—including eligible healthcare providers, educational institutions, municipalities, and non-profit organizations—and current LogMeIn customers with free, organization-wide use of many LogMeIn products for three months through the availability of Emergency Remote Work Kits. This includes its flagship program, GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams, which is more of an Office 365 feature than a separate service these days. In response to the virus threat, Microsoft is offering a new six-month Office 365 E1 trial offer that includes full meetings, collaboration, and workflow capabilities and will enable all global customers—e.g., hospitals, schools, and businesses—to start using Teams immediately. In addition, beginning March 10, Microsoft is rolling out updates to the free version of Teams that will lift restrictions on user limits and make it possible for users to schedule meetings for video calling and conferencing. The free version of Microsoft Teams was already impressive in its own right. It supports up to 300 members, with guest access, one-on-one, and group video and audio calls, shared files (2GB per user and 10GB per team), screen sharing, and document collaboration using online Office apps.

Zoom

Zoom is offering, for its Basic (free) users in China, unlimited meeting time for conferences with more than two participants. Like Microsoft Teams, its default-free offering is good enough for many small-to-medium businesses (SMB). Its free tier allows unlimited 1-to-1 meetings group sessions of up to 40 minutes and 100 participants.

Other major conferencing services, such as Slack and Zoho Meetings, haven’t announced any special deals although it is safe to assume that they and all other conferencing services will be offering new deals soon. The demand for remote-meeting software is spreading faster than the virus as worry infects the business world. You may also want to look into project management software such as Monday or Basecamp.

For those who are new to the world of virtual and remote work, these are just a few programs and tools you can utilize to make sure that everything is business as usual, despite the change in location. Next week we’ll share tips on how to manage your new work situation, in the meantime check out our other awesome articles about remote teams and remote work.

We hope everyone is safe and doing well. In times like these, the best thing to do is stay informed, keep calm and hope, and pray for the best. Learn more about MyOutDesk remote & virtual solutions: Schedule a Free Consultation Now.

March 11, 2020/by Abby

Fast Guide: Setting Up For Remote Work Amid A Health Crisis

Healthcare, MOD Virtual Assistants

As the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to peak this season, is your business equipped to respond to all urgent concerns? As a business owner, you have to think about the trigger points in your business so that you can make a quick and informed decision to adapt your systems and processes. Remote work is an effective preventative measure that will immediately decrease risks in community health and safety—as well as keeping businesses afloat.

Three Steps to Begin Remote Work Today

We are offering you a free guide to set up your employees for remote work. For business owners who want to make the switch the right way and stay productive, this guide includes three easy steps to get started.

Download the Fast Guide now and set up your team to work effectively from home immediately.

Identify all considerations in a disaster scenario
Prevent productivity loss
Focus on eliminating the potential financial impact
Maintain high-quality customer service
Perform your civic duty

[Download] Fast Guide: Setting Up For Remote Work Amid A Health Crisis (.doc)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends businesses actively encourage employees to stay home and, when at work, to practice good hand hygiene and coughing and sneezing etiquette. You also may consider doing the following for your employees:

Additional Employer Steps You Can Take:

Here are some crucial additional actions that you can take to increase the health and safety of your staff:

Suspend nonessential employee travel.
Minimize the number of employees working within arm’s length of one another, including minimizing or canceling large in-person meetings and conferences.
Urge employees to stay home when they are sick and maximize flexibility in sick leave benefits.
Not require a doctor’s note for employees that are sick as healthcare offices may be very busy and unable to provide that documentation right away.
Consider the use of telecommuting options for appropriate employees, refer to Fast Guide.
Consider staggering start and end times to reduce large numbers of people coming together at the same time.

[Download] Fast Guide: Setting Up For Remote Work Amid A Health Crisis (.doc)

Lasting Benefits of Remote Work

In response to the health crisis, the uptick in remote work may be temporary, but the truth is that remote work is a stable trend. Businesses are moving away from traditional offices to a blended remote and physical organization.

Luckily, MyOutDesk Virtual Professionals are most optimally positioned to work remotely from their homes. We encourage businesses to take advantage of and utilize the telework tools and systems that are already in place with having MyOutDesk Virtual Professionals for expanding remote work for all employees.

Ready To Go Remote? We Can Help!

We have 12 years of expertise working with thousands of clients and remote employees in a virtual environment. Nobody knows remote work as we do, and we’re to answer your questions! Schedule a free consultation with us now.

March 11, 2020/by Tim

8 Shocking Outsourcing Statistics You Absolutely Must Know NOW!

MOD Virtual Assistants

Starting back in 1989, outsourcing has become an integral part of corporate practice for major companies across the USA, and over the last four decades, it has percolated down to become part of small to mid-size businesses as well. Despite the rise in outsourcing within the U.S., there are still many who debate for and against it with no clear result as to which side is legitimate.

Outsourcing remains to be a hot-button topic with strong arguments for each side. If you’re considering outsourcing, it is important to educate yourself in order to make the best decision for you and your business – and don’t forget to book a Double My Business Strategy Session today to find out how a MyOutDesk Virtual Assistant can bring value to your business!

According to the Population Reference Bureau, Offshoring is the movement of jobs and tasks from one country to another, usually from high-cost countries, such as the United States, to low-cost countries where wages are significantly lower. Offshoring is often confused with outsourcing, which is instead the movement of jobs and tasks from within a company to a supplier firm. The offshoring of manufacturing jobs has been occurring for decades, but the offshoring of service-sector jobs is an incipient phenomenon, emerging in substantial numbers since 2002 and growing rapidly.

From the early research on offshoring, a primary motivation was to explain the inequality in the earnings of labor. Evidence from the United States and other countries showed that during the 1980s the relative wages shifted towards more-skilled workers so that a “wage gap” developed between those with higher and lower skills. The story for the 1990s and later is quite different. There has continued to be an increase in the relative wage of skilled workers in U.S. manufacturing, but the relative employment of these workers has sometimes fallen. That finding is strongly suggestive of the offshoring of service activities, whereby the more routine service activities are sent overseas.

Outsourcing is the business practice of hiring a party outside a company to perform services and create goods that traditionally were performed in-house by the company’s own employees and staff. Outsourcing is a practice usually undertaken by companies as a cost-cutting measure. As such, it can affect a wide range of jobs, ranging from customer support to manufacturing to the back office.

Here are some surprising statistics about outsourcing that you should know:

29% of businesses with fewer than 50 employees outsource, compared to 66% with 50 or more employees. – Larger scale businesses tend to outsource more than mid-lower scale businesses. This is because smaller businesses are less inclined to spend money on outsourcing due to the fact that they traditionally hold on to the belief system that it is better to keep their money “within the organization.”
Approximately 24% of small businesses outsource to improve efficiency. – Efficiency is extremely important for all businesses but is the highest priority for smaller-scale businesses. What could be a small error to a larger company could be devastating for a smaller one. United States outsourcing statistics show that another common reason (18%) that a small business turns to outsource is to increase available expertise and seek expert assistance.
The global outsourced customer experience market in 2018 was estimated at $75.1 billion. – Outsourcing statistics by year demonstrate that customer service is among the most outsourced processes among large companies and financial organizations. Since most businesses believe that improving customer experience is a top priority, it is not surprising that growth is projected to continue throughout 2020. By then, the value of the market is projected to increase to $82.6 billion.
71% of financial service executives outsource or offshore some of their services. – One of the top industries that outsource the most is finance. About 70% of retail and transportation firms do the same, while job outsourcing statistics show that the top spot remains reserved for pharmaceutical companies. Roughly 82% outsource services.
Saving money is a major motivation for outsourcing. – One of the most core reasons for outsourcing is to free up resources such as money and most especially time. Saving money is secondary, but still a top priority. About 45% of companies outsourcing business functions say that their business process outsources projects are meant to save money. About 46% say outsourcing lets them access skillsets that aren’t available in-house.
Over 44% of chief intelligence officers say that they are more likely to use outsourcing suppliers than they were just five years ago. – Offshoring statistics from 2018 show that the IT sector is moving toward outsourced suppliers most quickly. In fact, about 64% of outsourced offshore technology functions have to do with software application development. About 51% of technology executives say they outsource application and software maintenance, and 40% outsource their data centers.
About 300,000 jobs get outsourced out of the US each year. – US outsourcing statistics like this one make it easy to understand why so many people view outsourcing negatively. Negative sentiments are especially strong when there is a big economic crisis, and we’ve just lived through the second-largest recession in history. It is not surprising, then, that during the height of the Global Recession, 86% of Americans blamed outsourcing for exacerbating the crisis.
According to studies, approximately 50% of the US workforce will be remote or outsourced by the year 2025. – The rise in the need to cut down costs and the changing face of the traditional workplace has brought a majority of companies to look at their hiring processes and requirements in terms of geographical location. Being open to options such as outsourcing or remote workers opens up possibilities of a wider talent pool and offers job seekers more convenient and approachable opportunities. A special analysis done by FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics found that there has been a major upward trend in the number of people working remotely in the U.S. In the span of one year, from 2016 to 2017, remote work grew 7.9%. Over the last five years, it grew 44% and over the previous 10 years, it grew 91%. Between 2005 to 2017, there was a 159% increase in remote work. In 2015, 3.9 million U.S. workers were working remotely. Today that number is at 4.7 million, or 3.4% of the population. This is predicted to grow even more exponentially in the coming years.

As the face of the business world constantly and rapidly changes, the reality of the practicality of outsourcing is becoming more and more evident to business owners, regardless of the size of their business. What are your thoughts on outsourcing? Would you ever consider it or if you currently are outsourcing, what advice can you give to anyone who is considering it? Let us know in the comments!

March 4, 2020/by Abby

business owner managing their remote team on a virtual menu

Leadership From Afar: Effectively Managing A Remote/Virtual Team

MOD Virtual Assistants

Managing any team is a perpetual challenge within itself in any industry. Throw in the virtual element, and you’ve got another challenge altogether. While many aspects will largely remain the same, many elements will change the consequent dynamics and force you to tackle things differently.

Obviously, your first and most important step is building the best team with the right people. While many experts say that 2020 is the year for remote working options, it is not for everyone and does not suit everybody.

Managing a virtual team is easy with MyOutDesk Virtual Assistants. Schedule a Double My Business Strategy Session today to find out more.

Once you have found your winning team, you will normally face challenges that you would normally and some you may not expect. So how do you ensure that you are leading your virtual team to success?

Establish Clear Communication

Leading a virtual team means that you do not have the normal means to communicate with your team, you can’t visit them in their office or cubicle or walk around and peek over their shoulder or even call them into your office, your communication will largely take place via the phone or over the internet. As you will largely be relying on technology, finding a system that will serve your needs the best is important. Aside from a platform where you can talk, you will need several other systems such as a project management platform, an online document sharing platform, and even chat. The great news is that many systems offer all of that and more. You just need to do your research and find one that works for your business. Be careful when using chat, as there is a huge possibility that your “tone” may be misread. Always be clear about what you expect, and most of all, listen and listen well.

Establish Trust

Building relationships and loyalty can be much tougher with a virtual team. Since you largely work in separate spaces, you do not have the advantage of propinquity on your side. Therefore, you need to find different ways to establish these connections and foster an environment of trust. Do not micromanage. Checking in too much will send the message that you do not trust them, and they, in turn, will get frustrated. You might even see a high turnover rate. Instead, establish clear expectations, set deadlines, and even create timelines, and then allow your team to take ownership and responsibility for the parts they play.

Track Productivity

In the beginning, when you are building your team or when you have a new team member, you might want to use an activity tracker so you can have the peace of mind that each member of your team is using their time wisely. You can also reinstate it when you need to figure out why someone is lagging, perhaps or if you have any doubts. You can also create trackers for various tasks and, as we mentioned earlier, use a project management platform that clearly outlines each team member’s responsibilities. Through this platform, they should also check off finished tasks, ask for help if they encounter and hurdles, and keep everyone updated and informed about their progress.

Foster Engagement

Building trust requires engagement, and building engagement with a virtual team can be difficult, but it is not impossible. Most of the time, you don’t get the same opportunities in a remote environment for team-building events or casual, watercooler conversations that help to build that engagement. So you have to find other ways to promote teamwork and get people enthused about your company.

What you can do is create spaces and find time to create the engagement virtually.

Encourage casual chat for downtimes in a separate thread or chat room.
Schedule regular team meetings and huddles, make sure that some of them are non-work focused.
Schedule one-on-one time with each member where you check in on their general well-being.

It’s all about your company culture and how you can build this in your virtual space. It can be challenging but completely fulfilling at the same time. Are you ready to build a winning virtual team and lead them to victory? Book your Double MY Business Strategy Session today, and let’s get you started!

January 22, 2020/by Abby

myoutdesk virtual assistant working remotely successfully

4 Powerful Keys To Remote Staffing Success In 2020!

MOD Virtual Assistants

Remote staffing and virtual teams have seen a dramatic rise in popularity over the past decade. Surprisingly, even during the course of the upcoming 2020 year, experts are predicting that virtual & remote staff will become far commonplace & accepted as a part of the business than in the past – especially in organizations with a lot of tasks that don’t require a physical presence in the office.

A recent study found that a company can save over $10,000 annually when it hires remote staff. Findings also said that remote or virtual staff show a higher level of productivity, greater satisfaction rate, and not to mention access to a wider global talent pool. Despite these great findings, businesses and their consequent leaders still face many challenges in managing a global, remote team.

Build your global team of superstars with MyOutDesk Virtual Assistants. Schedule A Double My Business Strategy Session today to find out how.

Communication– Communication is an important aspect of managing a virtual team or virtual staff. You need to be flexible and find ways to communicate in a way that works for everybody. Finding a system that will address all your needs as a team is essential. Once you find your platform or platforms for communication, you should set up a specific meeting time weekly. Even a quick daily huddle ensures that everyone is apprised of each others’ tasks at hand. So you can address any concerns, etc., be flexible about how you communicate, and make sure that your team is aware of how to reach you at any given time and vice versa.

Company Culture- Experts say that top companies have been focusing more on their culture and identity as an organization in recent years. When handling a virtual team, this might be a little more challenging. This means that it may take a little more effort to establish the kind of environment and interpersonal interactions you wish to foster. You may want to consider setting up meetings for the sole purpose of your team getting to know each other better. Create spaces and specific times where the objective is to bond as a team and get invested in each other.

Synchronicity- Synchronicity can be a challenge when everyone is scattered all over the globe. Challenging but not impossible. To be on the same page, you can set systems and processes in place so that everyone is following the same protocols and will always be on the same page. You can use other tools such as project collaboration software as well.

Trust- Trust is a sticky thing when it comes to managing a virtual team. It is quite understandable that you are more likely to trust an in-house employee who you can see at any time versus someone working remotely who you cannot. However, if you allow this distrust to manifest when you deal with your virtual team, it will most definitely negatively affect you. Micromanaging your team will only lead to frustration and ultimately a breakdown of your entire system if you go this route. Therefore, be transparent and express your expectation of reciprocity of said transparency. Set clear deadlines, timelines, and expectations for all assigned responsibilities. Establish your availability in case of any roadblocks. You may also want to invest in some time tracking software if need be. Finally, make sure that you establish responsibility and accountability in your team and remember why you hired your team members to trust that they will do what they need to do.

All in all, creating a virtual team can reap many benefits for you and your business. It can open up many doors and solve many of your pain points. However, always keep in mind that it is always a two-way street, and you must match their efforts. Different challenges will come up that you may have to deal with in ways you never thought possible. It would be best if you gave the same zeal and diligence to go with an in-house team. The circumstances will be re-framed.

MyOutDesk can help you build your dream virtual team with our talented Virtual Assistants. So book your Double My Business Strategy Session today to find out how!

January 8, 2020/by Abby