Virtual office instead of lonely coffee kitchen – for productive remote work 

With a virtual office from trember, you bring the coffee kitchen back to your employees. This is how you boost the team spirit and performance of your employees who work remotely in home offices or at worldwide locations. Trember gives them true networking on a shared platform, spontaneous video calls, and also offers private video rooms and a large plenary room for announcements to everyone.

Whether your employees "used to" meet in front of the coffee machine, in the smokers' corner out front, in the break room, or in the cafeteria, there were numerous opportunities for them to spontaneously get together, exchange ideas, and talk about topics not always relevant to work. Even if this small talk about yesterday's soccer game or the latest Netflix series may at first seem contradictory to productive work, it is precisely this that contributes significantly to the success of companies.

Numerous studies show that casual conversations in the workplace and informal get-togethers bring a variety of benefits. For example, higher productivity and collaboration, a sense of trust among colleagues and supervisors, and the formation of genuine teams. Shared breaks in front of the much-loved coffee machine lead to both better cognitive performance and a strengthened, united and connected team. Such teams have been proven to produce better ideas and better results than those in which misunderstandings and friction occur repeatedly. So make sure your employees know each other early on. Even if they work mostly or completely remotely. Find out how a virtual office can help you in this article – perhaps over a good cup of coffee?

Want to learn how to create a virtual office at trember? Talk to our team

Bring the coffee kitchen back to your employees

The coffee kitchen has never been as important as it is today. If you rely on remote work, as numerous companies do, including us at trember, you should encourage spontaneous conversations in a relaxed atmosphere all the more. This is exactly what you achieve with a virtual office. 

This is how you can imagine a virtual office:
A virtual office is similar to the principle of an intranet - with the crucial difference that it is much more lively. Here, your employees can exchange information with each other in real time and, of course, with video. No complicated and time-consuming text chats that the other person might misunderstand. No texts that have to be approved by someone at a central location. Your employees log on to the browser-based platform, turn off the microphone and camera, and work on their regular tasks as usual. But just like in the office, they can also lift their heads to see what's going on to their left and right and engage in conversation with other colleagues. Or they may click around the platform to the coffee kitchen, where someone else often is. Here there is time for a brief small talk before they return to work refreshed and full of new ideas and thoughts.

"A virtual office is the perfect blend of intranet, email, Slack messaging and video calls - just combined in a much more lively and natural way."

When things get a little more confidential in the office

Sometimes an idea arises from small talk that not everyone is supposed to hear. Or - and this is also part of a functioning company - you "absolutely have to" exchange the latest gossip. For such confidential conversations, trember's virtual office offers a private mode. With one click, an employee can invite another conversation partner into a private room and the others can no longer eavesdrop on these conversations. The advantage over classic video conferencing tools: The two interlocutors in private mode remain in the office environment. They can still see the surroundings and the other people in that office. This quick and easy switch feels almost like being in the real office - whispering or taking someone aside for a moment. 

When there's something to announce

You want to communicate with your team, with your staff in a large group? Just like you would have invited them all to the kitchen, the break room or a meeting room in the past? Then just stay on the platform you already use for your virtual office. After all, everyone knows it and can use it well by now. 

trember therefore has a video room for up to 1,000 people in addition to the meeting rooms with the smart functions for private conversations. You can bring up to six people live on stage. Your employee has a question? No problem! Spontaneously invite him to the discussion round and hand over the microphone. With the video on, he can then ask his question or make his comment. No one has to type anything into the chat anymore. Questions asked live are much more lively and offer much less potential for misunderstandings. 

Onboarding thanks to a virtual office

You might be saying that the "old hands" in your office are already pretty well connected and find their way through the video calls, emails and chat messages even without such a virtual office. Presumably, that's certainly true for some. Especially to those who were already quite extroverted and well-connected before. But what about the new employees in your company or the new colleagues on your team? How do you integrate them as quickly as possible and in such a way that they actually feel like they belong? Especially if you don't want to or can't wait long until the next team event can be held in presence? Then, too, a virtual office is an excellent idea. After all, the newcomers in particular need a lot of information between the lines and, in addition to official organizational charts, have to find out who can answer what and who ticks how.

Therefore, offer the new colleagues a virtual coffee kitchen and regularly organize small team events where the new colleagues can meet and exchange ideas with their already well-connected colleagues. Also ensure that a small-talk atmosphere can develop. You can use small online games, team challenges or icebreaker questions for this purpose and thus loosen up the networking appointments. 

Examples:

• Try the trendy online game Wordle.
• Start a challenge to see who has the nicest pet or the coolest home office.
• Ask which Netflix series is the best right now or who also secretly keeps chocolate on their desk.

Who particularly benefits from a virtual office

Companies where many employees work in a home office or at different locations benefit most from a virtual office. The days when all employees always came to the office, or when employees from all over the world were often brought together in a single location for team events, have been over since the start of the pandemic at the latest. On the one hand, because we have all learned that remote work works - contrary to all fears and prophecies of doom - and, on the other hand, because we simply can no longer afford resource-intensive travel in the face of climate change. 

How to create your own virtual office with trember 

Quite unlike real offices, your virtual office is set up in no time. For this purpose, we at trember offer you turnkey offices that you can rent from us on a monthly basis. Included is a free design of a modern office. So you can start immediately. If you would like to make it more individual, you can also do that with us. We will gladly individualize your office for you - up to a complete whitelabel solution. Then no one will be able to see from which "prefabricated house builder" you bought your office. In addition, you can then feel completely at home in your environment. Why not recreate your office building or create one you've always wanted? 

The real advantage of a virtual office from trember: Everything you need for it comes from a single tool. Whether the interface, the space for important information and data, whether the video calls among employees, the private rooms for confidential conversations or the plenary rooms. So you won't lose anyone else along the way. Promise. We've tried it out - internally and in many other companies. 

Bottom line

With a virtual office, you give your employees back their beloved coffee kitchen. In this way, you promote team spirit and the performance of your employees even if they work in home offices or at locations scattered around the world. True networking on a shared platform that allows for spontaneous video calls and private video rooms, as well as the large plenary room for announcements to everyone, will help you do just that. Take a look right now. 

Want to learn more about trember virtual office? Take a look here or talk to our team