Business is a major aspect of the American work force, and in fact many business and banking terms have even entered the public lexicon and figures of speech. Today’s American businesses and office spaces, meanwhile, boast more arrangements and styles than ever before, allowing large and small companies alike to create an ideal office space for their needs, budget, and staff size. These options range from coworking spaces and coop office space, all the way to virtual offices and remote employees who are doing work on board a private jet. A virtual office? Some may wonder how an office could possibly be a virtual space, but in fact modern computers and Internet connections make virtual offices not only possible, but quite convenient and helpful for many companies large and small. What is there to know about these virtual offices or coop office spaces? Older business professionals may want to explore these new options, and Millennial employees, those born 1982-1995, may have a great affinity for them and pioneer their use in startup companies which are Millennial-majority.

Coop Office Spaces

One may first start off by considering making use of coop or co working spaces. This means that a work space is not divided into cubicles, but rather, a large room has an open air about it and the employees can easily see and talk to each other. In some parts of the world, in fact, this is the norm. A cubicle confines an employee, and there are many self-depreciating jokes about being confined in a cubicle. Jokes or not, cubicles may somewhat limit communication and cause an employee to feel that they are isolated, and that may hamper their creativity and networking capacity. By contrast, a co working space has desks and computers arranged so that the whole room is a single cubicle of sorts, and this may help workers feel less alienated from others on both a personal and business level. Younger em0ployees may take a great interest in this, being a generation of cooperation, sharing ideas and creativity, and more. Not that all older business workers are loners or that all Millennials are overly eager to share everything. But recent trends suggest that as Millennials make up a larger percentage of employees, their ideas and preferences become more emphasized. Sharing ideas and concerns between each other becomes easy in these coop spaces.

Co working spaces are also a good idea for a smaller company that doesn’t have the capital for a large building and countless cubicles. Startup companies make do with smaller premises, and that may mean sharing space and consolidating a number of departments, rooms, and offices into one to reduce the square footage needed for everything. As a business grows, it may or may not start splitting these shared spaces into separate offices. At the very least, though, it may be a good idea to have one or two private and separate meeting rooms, if nothing else. Even the most share-oriented and creative Millennial employees sometimes need a chance to discuss something or give a presentation in a quiet and separate environment.

Virtual Office Solutions

Meanwhile, a crowded office may also make use of virtual offices. This is not some elaborate Star Trekstyle hologram virtual reality, but rather, virtual offices are when employees make use of remote office solutions. Due to the Internet’s data-sharing power, employees often choose to work at home in a dedicated office, and these remote employees can send and receive all necessary files with e-mail and the company’s private Cloud storage account with ease. In fact, live video chat makes it possible to remotely attend meetings, where the remote employee can see and hear everything taking place at the meeting if a laptop is set up in the room.

Many employees today work remotely not jut because the office is crowded, but because it’s noisy and commuting may be very time-consuming. An employee who often uses the telephone may have trouble hearing clients or customers over the phone, and vice versa, at a crowded and noisy office. Therefore, working at home provides some much-needed quiet and isolation at their residence. Remote work also means that the employee may cut out all commute time from their schedule and dedicate it to more work.