Some business owners, in an age of working from home, decide that whilst they want to have a business address for their business, they don’t want an actual office itself. This is where a virtual office can step. Basically, A virtual office is an office rental solution that provides businesses with a professional, physical address to use for their business – for their website and sales collateral as well as for postal purposes. Whilst the service provides an address, there isn’t actually a physical office space to use and post can either be forwarded or picked up.
This might seem like a good cost cutting exercise, but there are a number of disadvantages to using a virtual office instead of an actual office rental.
Spending money for very little service
In no other circumstance would you pay for an address that you do not use. It’s still an outgoing cost, which literally gives you some text to put on your sales literature and online presence, and a mailbox. Whilst the argument might be that the business sounding address is value in projecting a professional image, in an age of Google, any potential client or partner would be able to look that address up and see it to be a venue that offices virtual offices.
Higher long-term costs
Where you’re spending money on an address without any space, you might find yourselves needing to either rent space for meetings and presentations or use hospitality as a venue such as taking potential clients to cafes or restaurants, giving a more social vibe.
If you’re spending money monthly anyway for the virtual office, you might find it works out cheaper in the long term to rent an office space with an actual office you can use for meetings and presentations.
Better for recruitment
If you’re looking to grow your business, the best talent will be looking for stability, professionalism, and prospects. Finding out that your office isn’t in fact an office does not project this image, and even if they want to work from home a percentage of the time, a lot of employees still want that ongoing physical contact and team feeling that comes with an actual office.
Office rental not virtual offices
If you’re looking to rent an office space in Surrey instead of a virtual office space, get in touch with SEND Business Centre to find out more about their flexible contracts and professional facilities.
