What our virtual office taught us

A virtual office does not replace the physical office, but it gives a dispersed team back what remote work takes away: seeing each other, bumping into each other and talking without booking a meeting. That is what the Osol team found in 2023, after six months in a virtual office, the Osol Meta Office, an online office floor plan where each employee was represented by an avatar.

This article tells the story of that experience as we lived it at the time. The Osol team was then officially working from anywhere: remote work had been a first step, and the virtual office was meant to be the glue that would let us come together, from anywhere.

Why a virtual office?

For months, we had been saying it.

“The line between work and personal life is shrinking as work becomes freer and more hybrid. To stay competitive, companies must offer their employees a range of ways to work. Working from home, remote work, flexible hours… this is no longer an option but a new reality.” Maxime Cousin

Yet this revolution in work brings many challenges. Two stood out for us.

• Culture gets diluted: employees are much less stimulated by the physical touchpoints of the brand or brands the company carries.
• Bonds loosen: some colleagues hardly ever run into each other any more. Out of sight, out of mind.

We spent a long time looking for what to do. The answer came from a virtual world, the idea made fashionable by Mark Zuckerberg (aka Marco, aka Zuck to his friends, aka the godfather of Facebook).

The goal: give everyone the freedom to work wherever they like, while giving teams a shared space that carries the company's rules, rituals and brand elements. So that everyone could run into each other, talk quickly and meet, from the four corners of the world. So that everyone would find a familiar space, whether they were working at the office, in a coworking space, at home, on a train, in a café or in a park. So that everyone would feel “at Osol”, wherever they were.

What did our virtual office look like?

We chose the Gather.Town app to create our first virtual office. At the time we set it up, it seemed to us the simplest and most complete option for our needs. If we were doing it again, we would probably choose WorkAdventure: simpler, less energy-hungry, open source and, above all, French.

The floor plan was deliberately compact, with many dedicated rooms, so that you could see everyone at a glance. It was divided into zones, each with a clear purpose.

• Focus spaces, marked by a sign at the top of the plan, for working undisturbed or taking an external call.
• Collaboration zones, lit-up rectangles where everyone inside can see and hear each other.
• A boardroom with 12 to 20 seats, for all-hands meetings and management and executive committee meetings.
• “Solo lunch” spaces, outdoors, to signal a lunch break.
• Portals to the offices of partners we had decided to build bridges with: Microdoing and Scalezia.

How did we use it day to day?

We distinguished between “focus” times, when nobody can disturb us, and “discussion friendly” times, when we are happy for a colleague to come and talk to us.

For an informal chat, you just moved your avatar close to a colleague's: a window opened and switched on the microphone and camera. If the person had the app open, the call started on its own. Otherwise, you rang them.

For a meeting, such as the Weekly Business Review between Elon and me, you just joined a collaboration zone. To leave the meeting, you stepped out of the lit-up zone, and you could no longer hear your colleagues.

Every Monday, the whole team met in the boardroom for the weekly meeting. This room was equipped by Osol, so that nobody ran out of battery, and had a Klaxoon collaborative whiteboard and a sticky-note tool provided by Miro.

The office's tools and rituals

A few tools completed the space and gave it its rituals.

• A Pomodoro timer, to frame a meeting or a focus session until the next break.
• A whiteboard, for collaborating with sticky notes, where you could even add Klaxoon boards.
• A fountain, to rest your mind and meditate for five minutes, soothing sounds guaranteed.
• An Osol Base, because when we say we equip everyone, anywhere, we are not joking: we even had virtual Picos and Bases.

And a few shortcuts the whole team knew: the F key to throw confetti when a contract was signed, the W key for a wild dance, the G key to walk through a colleague when you were stuck. One last tip from the time: download the app rather than using the browser, as it lags less and uses less memory.

What rules did we set ourselves?

A virtual office only works if everyone plays along. We set three rules.

• Gather is the first app you open when you start your day. Along with Monday and Slack, these were the mandatory apps of our remote organisation.
• Everyone is responsible for their place on the plan. Sitting at an open desk means accepting interruptions, and you are free to go and talk to anyone sitting at an open desk. To avoid being disturbed (deep work, external meeting, video call), you switch to “do not disturb” mode or join a focus space.
• Show where you are physically working from. Everyone updated their status to say whether they were at our Cannes office, our Paris office, our factory, at home or remote. And it worked even better when everything had been entered in advance in Offishall.

What worked?

After six months, the team had fully embraced it.

• More visibility over the team.
• Fewer informal calls and pointless distractions, because you could see before you interrupted.
• A stronger sense of team, despite the distance.

The reason comes down to one word: presence. You knew the others were there, and you could go and see them in two seconds, without scheduling a video call.

What a virtual office does not replace

The physical office, or offices for distributed teams, was not dead, and that was never the aim. The virtual office replaced neither the places nor the time spent together: it connected them, on the days when the team was spread out.

Our conclusion at the time fits in one sentence: a real hybrid strategy must rest on a “digital first” foundation, which offers continuity of service to all employees, whether or not they are at the office. And that foundation takes discipline: without shared rules, a virtual office quickly becomes one more empty room.

What this experience says about the office

Hybrid working rests on a simple idea: you should be able to work anywhere, with the same resources. The virtual office applied that idea to presence. The same logic guides Osol in buildings: power flexibility makes it possible to work anywhere in an office, without depending on an outlet.

Frequently asked questions

What is a virtual office?
A virtual office is an online workspace that reproduces an office floor plan. Each employee has an avatar there, and moving close to a colleague is enough to start a video conversation.

Does a virtual office replace the physical office?
No. In our experience, it connects a dispersed team on the days when they do not see each other, but it does not replace the time spent together at the office.

Which tool did the Osol team use?
In 2023, we chose Gather.Town, which seemed to us the simplest and most complete. Looking back, we would probably have chosen WorkAdventure, which is simpler, less energy-hungry, open source and French.

How do you avoid being constantly disturbed in a virtual office?
By setting clear rules: focus spaces where nobody interrupts, a “do not disturb” mode, and making everyone responsible for showing their availability.