Imagine you worked in an office that was cramped and drab. An office with no clear organization into departments or teams, so that you are forced to wander around searching for anyone you need to talk to. An office without a single nod to comfort or fun in sight – hard chairs, no break room, no windows, and no pictures from home allowed on your desk.
How productive do you think you and your team would be in an atmosphere like that?
Now imagine you worked in a bright, vibrant, spacious office, logically organized so that members of the same departments are clustered together, and teams can easily collaborate. An office where personal touches are welcomed, ideas are generated through friendly chit-chat in the break room, and every office has a view of the outdoors.
Sounds like a dream, right?
The set-up and feel of an office contribute more than people sometimes realize to the quality of the work that gets done there – and this is true whether that office is a physical space or a virtual one.
Which is why we take such care here at Sococo to make sure that every one of our clients gets their company’s virtual office space set up with the layout and design that suits them best.
To help you get started with your own company’s Sococo office design, we’d like to share the following tips and considerations to keep in mind as you customize your space.
1. Office Configuration
When you first start imagining what your company’s virtual office could look like, the temptation is to go wild right off the bat, drawing up custom blueprints worthy of an architect, or choosing the most complex office set-up in our arsenal on a whim. The problem with this approach, however, is that you really won’t know what set-up will work best for your company’s particular workflow until you actually try it. It’s no good having the fanciest design around, if it’s not functional.
So here’s what we recommend. For the first few months, stick with our default office configuration, or at least one of our more basic existing layouts. Use it until you come to understand how Sococo works in your organization.
Once you have a good feel for what works – and what needs tweaking in order to work even better for you – that’s the time to start thinking about changing your space.
It all comes down to your company’s workflow. How many offices do you need, and which types? How should they be grouped? Do you have teams who work together all day every day, or frequent meetings between departments? Maybe you have weekly or biweekly meetings with your entire workforce, but usually see mostly one-on-one or small group meetings during the rest of the month. Do you invite clients in to your Sococo office space for meetings, as well?
Each of these scenarios presents a different set of needs that would be met best by a different office layout. But until you’ve actually put your particular workflow into the Sococo environment in a test drive, you won’t know exactly how your company’s flow translates. So try it out first, and then decide.
Your next consideration should be how many of these office spaces – or maps – your organization will need. We’ve found that 50-60 people per space is optimal. Having fewer than that can make your virtual office space feel empty, while more than that can make it much harder to find people. It’s better to have multiple manageable maps than one huge, unwieldy map.
2. Room Sizes, Names, and Labels
Once you have a good idea of the right office configuration for your organization, you’ll need to decide how large those offices, conference rooms, and bullpens should be. This is another element that will become clear after using a basic Sococo layout for a few months.
Depending on the size, number, and frequency of your meetings, as well as the number of employees and visiting clients that you have, you can customize your office and conference room sizes to provide the perfect fit. Sococo offices can hold any even number of people (2, 4, 6, 8, etc.), up to a maximum of 32. And in order to allow collaboration and screen sharing within any size office, we can place up to 4 screens in an office, as well.
While it may seem like a good idea to make your offices larger than needed in case of growth, we’ve found that it actually works better to make them just big enough for the employees you have now, with room for maybe just a few more. Make them too big, and your offices can feel empty even when all your employees are present.
Other considerations when customizing your offices include each office’s name and the color of its label. Color-coding offices by department or team is a great way to make it instantly clear where to find people, and of course, naming your offices is vital to knowing who can be found in each one. While employees can change their office’s name to whatever they’d like, it’s smart to require them to include their own name, so that locating them is not difficult.
3. Administrators and Moderators
Speaking of the features that employees can and cannot change themselves, it’s important to consider who will take on the roles of administrator and moderator in your Sococo virtual office. The owner or administrator is the person with the authority to make changes at the account level, while the moderator is able to make changes at the office space or map level. Regular members can customize their own office, their avatar, and their own personal settings.
4. Customization
Now, if after a few months of trying out a basic office layout you find that you really do need an extreme makeover, Sococo edition, then you’re ready to give your imagination free rein. We have clients with round conference rooms, and clients with Sococo spaces designed to correspond exactly with their physical offices. We have clients with green space and koi ponds outside their office, and clients with couches and sushi on tables inside. We even have clients whose offices sit on a cloud, and clients with trucks instead of offices, to represent their mobile workforce.
From the simple addition of your company logo to an existing Sococo layout, to a custom space built from the ground up, we can make your virtual office anything you want it to be.
The Process
Here’s how the whole thing works. As a new client, you’ll first visit our Customer Support center and speak with one of our friendly representatives there. They’ll find out more about your needs, and walk you through the different maps that would make the best fit. Then they’ll give you some considerations, such as the ones we mentioned above, to start mulling over, and discuss configuration options.
Once you’ve had the chance to live in your Sococo office space for a while and know what changes you want to make, you’ll relay that information to us, and we’ll have our design team get started right away. We’ll go through an approval process in which you can have changes and tweaks made – and making the most of this process is of vital importance, because once your office is approved and complete, it can’t be changed! So pay close attention to every detail, from colors to room sizes.
Now that you have an overview of the customization process, what are you waiting for? Do you want some virtual donuts on your virtual break room table, or a few virtual trees outside your virtual office? Pop on in to our Customer Support office and let us know – we can’t wait to get started for you!
