Concern over the Corona-virus has forced more and more companies to have their employees work from home. Based on the announcement made by World Health Organization, Corona-virus has officially reached the ‘pandemic’ status. Many companies including major companies like Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple, Amazon, Sales-force etc. are enforcing mandatory work from home policies to control the spread of Covid-19.

According to the Corona-virus: How to work from home, the right way article, “Some employees will be working from home for the first time, which means figuring out how to stay on task in a new environment that may not lend itself to productivity. But there are ways to deliver results and avoid going stir-crazy, from setting up a good work space to the way you talk to your team.”

With the latest technology and ways to connect virtually, there has been a rise in working remotely. There are several benefits of working from home in these situations. Employees tend to be more productive, take fewer sick days, face less stress, work more hours and spend less time to commute to work. People prefer not having to spend extra time getting ready in the morning, skipping commuter traffic, and the ability to run an errand or travel. Being able to customize your work day is appealing to everyone.

Tips to work from home

Communicate more often

Having a clear communication with your boss and your team is the key to working from home. Use communicating tools such as chat apps or video conferencing apps to stay connected with one another on a regular/daily basis. Managers need to make an effort to stay connected, check in with the employees, especially to those who live alone and might feel left out or isolated.

Create a real job environment

Try to create a dedicated work space, create boundaries within your home and let your family members understand that you are working. Take shower, get dressed and work like you would work at your office desk.

Do not panic and stay positive

Try not to focus on negative headlines. Instead take few breaks and catch up with your colleagues and chat. Its easy to panic and stressed out on theses days so, the Managers and the team need to acknowledge one another’s stress and cheer for the team and stay focused.

Virtual office assistant could be a great help

You are sick or you might be working from home but you also have to keep up with your work and the incoming calls. At Officense you will have a team of executive assistants, both in office and virtually, who tailor phone answering services to your needs. You will gain a fully trained and professional staff that will make working from home work for you with Covid-19 or without. You have the ability to grow your business from the comfort of your home.

Our executive assistants answer your calls, handle your mail, greet your clients, follow up with leads and schedule appointments, providing a corporate feel and impressive business address. We provide high-end business facilities with fully furnished dedicated and a la carte office space, as well as conference rooms by the hour. An instant office when you need it, professional phone service to give your home office a corporate feel, and an impressive staff to help you with all of your administrative work.

Give Officense a call at (410) 814-7500 to meet your new staff and tour your new business location, today!

Anyone that starts a business obviously wants to see it grow. So have you taken the time to really think about how beneficial networking could be? I understand that finding the ability to network in your overly-flooded schedule can be challenging for any business owners. It requires a decent amount of free time – and money too – to go to networking events, schedule dinner meetings, or even to stop by a potential partner’s workplace.

Imagine this scenario:

You have to get A, B and C done for your company by the end of the week – on top of finishing X, Y and Z. You have a few meetings in the mix and now something else goes wrong along the way too. Maybe employees got sick so everyone thinks they have the coronavirus, or maybe people just show up not wanting to work. Now you have a plethora of tasks, and definitely no time for a networking meeting. Sounds about right for any company at any given moment.

You’re frustrated while heading home, so you bring it up to your family at dinner. Then you bring it up again when you go out for drinks with some friends. And now your buddies, who struggle with business issues themselves, are also talking about the downfalls for everyones companies.

But what if you found something that would alleviate at least half of your current problems? What if it freed up some extra money for your business too? What if you had a mutual place to meet for networking discussions? Or better yet, what if you worked in a coworking office with some of your potential partners?

Now imagine this scenario:

You and your employees work in a coworking space, which is a shared office that would allow individuals from various companies to work independently or collaboratively. Coworking environments could really be a beneficial factor in a company’s expansion, and overall success rate. Like I said, it takes time and money to go out of your way for all of these networking meetings. If you relocated your business to a coworking space, your rent would be cut back pretty tremendously. In turn opening up funds for more business moves you want to make, such as making investments in networking campaigns.

Coworking spaces themselves also give the opportunity for networking, because you are in a space with people you otherwise wouldn’t meet in a regular workplace setting. As you are working in the same office suite as these other companies, you come to build a relationship with them. After all, you’re seeing them on a regular basis and learning what they do. Some business owners feel co-working spaces can be counter intuitive to what they are trying to accomplish. They feel employees will either be talking too much, or keeping headphones on all day, avoiding interaction with eachother in general. While that sometimes is the case, it’s not always true.

Officense is the answer:

Luckily, here at Officense we have a coworking space with individual offices. When you have your own office inside a coworking environment, it provides a sense of privacy you otherwise wouldn’t get in other open-floor plans to complete your work without distractions. All while still encouraging coworkers and other business owners who work in the space with you to step into your office and discuss collaborations and business opportunities (hence, the networking aspect you’ve been craving).

If you are meeting with a larger group, we have 2 conference rooms, equipped with a monitor for video conferencing as well. Even if you didn’t need a full-time office, you could always make it a part-time solution, as we have very cost-effective day rates for renting the conference rooms and offices only when you need it. Officense also offers around the clock access to the space we have provided for you. So even when your company doesn’t run 24×7, those late night conferences can still continue if you wish.

Another benefit to our coworking space at Officense is the ability to utilize our team of executive assistants to handle your receptionist work. You wouldn’t have to hire employees who don’t want to work anymore. Instead, you’d have us here ready to help you out with whatever you need. So stop being overwhelmed with stress and things to do! Don’t discuss all the things going wrong over drinks tonight, talk to your group about the perfect solution: contacting Officense!

Contact Us Today:

We’ll be ready to help with your coworking needs, so you can focus more on networking, and growing your business to it’s full potential. For more information, call Officense at 410-814-7500, email us at info@officense.com, or stop in for a visit. We are located at 300 E. Lombard St., Suite 840, Baltimore, MD 21202. We’ll look forward to meeting you!

Today, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a significant tool to help your website to be noticeable and accessible to your potential clients. If your website is listed at the very end of the list then it’s possible that clients will never bother to visit it. Google is the most popular search engine and it’s important that your website has a good SEO score in order to rank. Recently Google launched a program called “Google Guarantee”, a program that is very helpful for local and service-oriented businesses.

The program helps customers find reliable, genuine and trustworthy local businesses when they go online to find a solution to their problem. However, using Google Guarantee has some very strict requirements for response times and customer service. To ensure compliance, a local and trusted receptionist support team is a must, and Officense can provide without the traditional expense associated with hiring support.

What is required to qualify for Google’s Local Service Ads?

Confirm your eligibility: To verify if you can connect to your clients with Local Service Ads, first confirm your business type and if the service is offered in your region. If the service is not offered yet in your region, sign up to be notified once they are available to your region.

Create your business profile: In your business profile, list the job types that you offer. Your business profile will determine the jobs that match your local service ads, so you need to be very specific about what kinds of jobs you are looking for. You also need to list the areas where you want your leads, your weekly budget and your business hours. Paying for Google Local Services ads is the best approach to make sure that your website is one of the top results that appear in your potential client’s searches and also, it’s a very first step to be approved for Google Guarantee.

Add your license and insurance details: To be eligible for Google Local Service Ads you will need to provide proof of your business license and insurance coverage. Be sure to provide up to date paperwork.

Undergo Background checks: In order to qualify, the businesses will require to complete a screening process that includes background checks performed by Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations Inc. The background checks are for free.

Managing your leads and jobs

Once you have the business profile completed, you can launch your Local Service Ads and start collecting new leads. You can view and manage the leads via the Local Services Ads app or your lead inbox. It is highly suggested that you respond to leads as soon as you receive them. As per the program policies, “Having a consistently fast response time could improve your ad’s ranking on the search and increases your ability to receive leads. If you regularly fail to respond to messages or have repeated delays in your responses, the option for customers to send message requests to your business may be removed.”

When you’re on the road heading to an estimate for one of your customers, the last thing you want is your phone constantly ringing with people trying to schedule appointments. You need staff who can take calls for you and help your business grow! At Officense, we have a fully-trained staff readily available to provide phone answering services for all of your contracting needs. Our receptionists are trained to answer calls in a professional manner while guiding the call the best way possible in a minimum amount of time.

As a contractor, having a staff to lighten the load while you’re at job sites is incredibly beneficial. Our staff can eliminate hang-ups and improve your customer retention. With Officense, your calls will be answered quickly and the message will be sent to you immediately, a call will never go unanswered. With our 24/7 service, someone will always be there to speak with your customers, even if it’s after-hours. The staff is a contractor’s support. We obtain the information and help to grow your customer base, and you provide excellent service to your customers!
For more information, give Officense a call at (410)814-7500, today!

When you go to start a new business there are a variety of things to consider. There is the fun of picking a new name, but also the toil of the legalities involved. You also have to consider where your business address will be and what kind of digital footprint you want. All of these things and more can be helped with by utilizing Officense’s new business startup services.

Location

When you startup a new business, the first thing to consider is where it will be. You can work from home, many do, you can use a p.o. box, or you can rent space somewhere. How much space do you need? How professional do you want your business to appear? Where do you want to locate your business for the best traffic of those you are there to serve? After all, a business is all about making money by serving a portion of the population. The key to any business placement is “Location, Location, Location”.

Registration and Online

Get registered so that your state can properly assess and tax you. Not the most fun of tasks, but a necessary one none the less. After you have accomplished both of those tasks, you need to decide how much of a digital footprint you want. Do you just want clients to be able to email you? Alternatively, given this digitized age, do you want your startup to be found on Google Maps or have a website detailing the service/s you provide? To do this you need to register a domain name and set up a website.

Contact

Lastly, is your startup the kind of business that will need someone to answer your phones? Are you someone who does not like to speak to people but still wants to make a profit? Do you expect a variety of spam calls to come in (believe me, you will get far more of those than you dreamed possible, they are not limited to just household and cellular phones)? Do you simply want to be able to focus on your clients one at a time without distraction of setting up appointments for other clients?

You can find other things to check off your startup list in this article from SmallBizTrends that has 30 such check points for you.

Officense is capable of helping with each of these steps. We also provide mail services (where you won’t even have to deal with the spam mail you and your business will get) as well as receptionist services. Our address, that you may use for your office address, is in a premier location. Let our extremely well trained executive assistants become yours. So give us a call, message us on Officense, or come on in at 300 East Lombard St, Baltimore, MD 21202.