Virtual Office Management Means Effective Communication

For these staff members, seeing other employees on a computer or video conferencing screen simply does not replace personal contact. As for time off, those without firm personal or professional boundaries can end up spending much of their non-work hours back at their desk, pounding out more work and forgetting about the importance of work-life balance.

Another drawback is that it's too easy to start work late, run an errand or find a distraction rather than doing one's work. Frequently, these behaviors are a means of compensating for the lack of having other people to interact with.

A further disadvantage of a virtual office when compared to a traditional one is that in a conventional office, if employees need additional guidance or direction on a project or task, they can simply walk down the hall to speak with someone. In the virtual office, it sometimes takes more time to get information, especially when the key person, or an alternate, isn't available.

Given these positive and negative factors, what caveats exist for the effective entrepreneur who wants to create a virtual office?

First, hire the right people. This is true in any company, but even more so in the virtual one. Deb Beck of Studio 18 Group says that successful virtual employees are "self-starters and self-disciplined -- it's definitely lonely working in a vacuum, and they need to be able to deal with this."

Katz echoes Beck, saying that effective virtual employees, "need to connect with other outside communities," not just the virtual work environment they're in.