Looking for an immersive experience outside the office? A virtual workspace is all you need. These amazing software have quickly evolved to deliver a gamified experience with real-world business outputs. They work with a limited number of users per company or team but that only seems to ensure the delivery of their innovative and really captivating services. Read through this article to learn what virtual workspaces are and see some top examples of this software. 

What is A Virtual Workspace?  

A virtual workspace is a remote office or work environment created on web or cloud-based systems and enabled by multiple technologies such as emails, video conferencing, and instant address or information sharing. The idea of building a virtual workspace is to present a fully functional platform - with the resemblance of a real office, for remote teams. 

Remote organizations and businesses may depend entirely on virtual workspaces but hybrid work settings also benefit from having a virtual workspace in place and ready to go. For these partly remote offices, a virtual workspace gives employees the power to jump on a task - from where they left off at the office, for example, by adding a new thought to their project plan. 

Why is it Important to Design a Virtual Workspace? 

Virtual workspaces are fascinating platforms. Like a physical office, they provide an environment for conducting business administrative and operational activities. A good design on a virtual workspace would work to:

Boost Productivity: 

The next generation of businesses will be far better at data review and analysis, resource management, and business execution - than we are today. They will be flexible, have keen insights on customer and market trends, and rely heavily on sophisticated technologies. 

If we should go further, we will say that the next generation of businesses will move a long way from the brick-and-mortar offices we are currently familiar with. They will embrace virtual workspaces and this will transform them into productivity machines: because virtual workspaces are designed to do just that. 

Virtual workspaces prove to significantly increase productivity for three main reasons:

• They eliminate employees’ need to shuttle between their homes and the office, giving them a reason to focus on the work they are doing without ever having to think of the weather outside, their safety, or the long and tiring ride back home. Again, sliding into the office and working at full capacity whether it’s weekend, late in the evening, or dead at night is possible. This way, employees can handle unscheduled business tasks and meetings and still get great results. 
• They enable advanced personalization which is often difficult or too costly to implement in a physical office environment. This freedom translates to increased engagement and a bolstered performance from individual employees. 
• A huge point for productivity in remote offices comes from being able to introduce AI technologies into the office space. With virtual workspaces, this process is a breeze. This would significantly increase the time efficiency of a business team. 

Slash Administrative Costs:

Every virtual office has the characteristic of reducing administrative costs since building rental and maintenance fees are done away with, and there is no need to purchase high-priced workstations or office equipment. Businesses that want even more budget cuts can achieve this by having well-planned and properly implemented designs in their virtual workspaces. 

For example, if you are looking to chop down on subscription costs, you can choose a virtual workspace that gives your employees access to a paid service through one (shared) account. This way, rather than making subscription payments for each of your employee’s remote accounts, you only pay for one account and give each employee the login credentials to access the paid service when they need to. 

What Should Be Considered When Choosing a Virtual Workspace?

Virtual workspaces are delicate, and they are so for the reason of their non-physical nature. 

Communication and Collaboration:

An office design should naturally foster communication between employees and working teams and of course, physical offices score very high points when it comes to how much interaction they stimulate.  

Virtual workspaces also do a fantastic job of having users chit-chat about one thing or the other and hold professional conversations when the need arises. This software makes it happen by enhancing seamless communication through instant messaging, audio and video interactions, and a number of different notification options. 

Businesses that are heavy on communication need to look at the audio functionality of a prospective virtual platform - for example, whether spatial audio and noise cancellation are being offered). They would also want to inspect the video quality that it delivers, find out about the file-sharing options available, and understand how effective the notification system is - to ensure they don’t miss a thing. 

Togetherness: 

It is believed that a regular office environment promotes a deep feeling of togetherness. This is healthy for employees and also strongly empowers the work that is being carried out. Creating a similar effect outside brick-and-mortar offices is a challenge. And with many remote businesses lacking that crucial feeling of togetherness, employee creativity is limited along with the capacity of the team to make decisions. 

Many virtual workspaces inspire the feeling of togetherness using advanced technology such as spatial audio, which gives the impression that a team member whom you are in a conversation with is moving closer or farther away from you. Shared music also works great for team parties, and the possibility of having the same design template or introducing similar branding elements across multiple user spaces will help to promote virtual togetherness. 

Security and Privacy:

One of the first things new employees are introduced to is the security and privacy policies of a business. These structures advise the flow of information. They ensure that high-risk data are all properly handled and that employees are aware of what steps to take in the event of a compromise. 

Virtual workspaces need to have a lot of security setup in place since full dependence on the internet and cloud-based services puts remote businesses at risk of cybersecurity attacks. Moreover, having employees work from different locations and out of sight increases the tendency of security or data compromise through careless actions or oversight.  

To handle this, businesses ought to orientate staff on the right thing to do both before and after a security or privacy incident. Moreover, user teams also have to consider the type of encryption(s) available on their platform of choice, what their privacy policy says, and how reputable the workspace team is when it comes to resolving security and privacy issues. 

5 Best/Trending Virtual Workspace Software

Gather Town: 

Gather Town is a popular virtual workspace that does a good job of bringing the office feel to remote teams. According to one user, the software allows in-person spontaneity. Some of the amazing features of this software include 

• Shared multiple screens
• Virtual backgrounds and background blur
• Whiteboard collaborations
• SSO
• Slack, Google, and Outlook integrations

Startups new to Gather Town can apply to a special program that gives them two months of free usage. The criteria for eligibility here is that the startup must not be a previous or current customer on the workspace, they must not have more than 75 employees, and they must have received a Seed - Series B funding. 

Gather Town allows teams of up to 10 people to enjoy a free plan. Beyond this is the premium plan that goes for $25 per month per individual user, and then there is the customized pricing plan for enterprises and other large businesses. 

Kumospace:

Kumospace is a NASA-supported workspace priced for its vivid environment and very impressive user experience. The tool allows team members to collaborate in both tasks and events through:

• Customizable office spaces. 
• Digital games, 
• Online whiteboard
• Milestone setting

Kumospace goes further to provide advanced analytics on each member of an online community. This gives supervisors and management teams a good look at the activities and progress of employees. At the same time, it offers remote team members the ability to gauge their performance and properly manage tasks. 

Professional and business plans on Kumospace charge as low as $8 and $15 per month, for each user. 

Remo:

Remo stands out from other virtual workspaces by positioning itself as a place for remote events and meetings.  It claims that 91% of its users access its services with their microphone and video turned on and that it receives up to 3.2 times more engagement than Zoom and Microsoft Teams. 

The workspace sports features like:

• Assigned seating
• Locked tables
• Polling and quizzing
• Sponsorship embedding 

After a thrilling time, users can go through post-event analytics to estimate the success of their meeting. Like many other virtual workspaces, users of the Remo platform can access document and whiteboard collaborations as well as join office rooms or special talks.

The Remo workspace is built to support teams of 25 people for a $ 100-a-month package. The platform seems to promote teams with a maximum of 10 people by offering special pricing with up to 30% discount. 

Kosy Office

Having a space in the Kosy office means using an avatar and having access to a really cool work environment. The collaboration and team-building effect of the software is said to foster up to 30 touchpoints per person every week. This comes from features like:

• Introducing company branding in the workspace
• Applying interactive assets
• Using unique task-related templates 
• Instant chats messaging
• Shared music 
• Control access to rooms and office spaces. 

To simulate a real-world environment, team members using the Kosy Office workspace can move close to or far from one another. This is reflected through natural spatial audio during communication. 

Kosy office allows huge businesses such as enterprises to pay based on a custom pricing plan. The other two pricing options include $10 a month per person for up to 10 persons and a free plan for 5 users. 

Ro.am

Roam promotes brief, down-to-the-point meetings by having a default audio first setting and allowing users to see when and what kind of meetings other team members are engaged in. Team members on Roam can customize their workspaces to suit cultural and aesthetic tastes and the entire remote office could be designed with auditoriums and other relevant or necessary structures. 

The Roam workspace is still in beta and the software could prove a little technical for new users, serving as some of its downsides. 

Users on Roam will be required to pay $10 per month per active individual and in 2024, this pricing is set to automatically increase to $10.25 per month for the same category of active users. 

Comparing These 5 Best/Trending Virtual Workspace Software 

Final Note 

Hybrid and remote platforms will be largely responsible for hosting future work and learning activities. In hybrid teams, the benefits include having a remote and a brick-and-mortar environment to work in - all at the same time. Virtual workspace users have a different experience since they are stuck on the digital side of things. 

The unique mode of operation in virtual workspaces is in no way a disadvantage to the businesses that utilize them. If anything, operating outside physical structures creates an opportunity to utilize AI and emerging technologies while cutting down on administrative costs, work-related stress, and the like. 

You can give these amazing platforms a try and see how they impact your flow and the energy of your team. While at it, be sure to read more interesting articles on our blog.

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