Without a doubt, we are living in a very different world today than we were before the COVID-19 pandemic. When people were forced to work at home it spawned many new industries that could operate successfully in the Virtual space. Suddenly the was a demand for services that would keep businesses operating as normally as possible online.
E-commerce saw a huge boost, as did many virtually-based outsourced service providers, and Entrepreneurs saw the gap and started new businesses. This was one of the plusses of the pandemic and it came out of one of the big negatives of the pandemic – the loss of many jobs.
Virtual events became the new norm
Sometimes out of adversity comes great possibilities though and one of the great success stories of this dark time was that the virtual events industry, already something that was developing at a good pace, suddenly launched into being an essential service to keep business people connected.
It was rapidly developed to be able to provide everything from small meetings to major events like exhibitions, and it gave Events Co-ordinators a new way of being able to continue to serve their clients. Further to that, we discovered that virtual events had many advantages over in-person meetings, like a much wider audience spread and huge cost savings.
Bosses demand savings and workers demand flexibility
Although the pandemic has very much waned now, the benefits to business owners of hosting virtual events, and the savings and convenience to employees of working from home, have now become very much in demand. In fact, employers are struggling to get workers back to offices and to get them to attend fixed time webinars as they demand more flexibility.
Flexibility is key
As far back as 2019, even before the pandemic, an ‘International workplace group’ study found that 80% of workers would turn down a job that did not offer a flexible work schedule for one that did. Now that employees, working from home, have experienced far more flexible time schedules, this has become an essential factor when deciding on a job.
Cost makes it possible
Well, the business owner’s demand for lower costs of events is actually what makes the employee’s demand for flexibility possible. Not only can they choose to still host online events when they are more suitable for employees and potential clients alike, but because of the far lower costs they can host an event, or spread webinars out, over a whole week instead of setting up a fixed date!
This conclusively shows that although the trend now may be leaning to more in-person and hybrid events, virtual events still meet the demand for savings and flexibility!
Virtual or hybrid, Virtual Event has it all
With a virtual events platform based on the highly successful international ‘Hubilo’ model, local events company Virtual Event can offer virtual and hybrid events of any nature and assist Events Organisers to make them streamlined and successful.
Talk to us about whatever form of event you have in mind, and let us advise you on the many ways you can be as cost-effective and as flexible as your clients demand – or book a demo here to learn more.
Stay current – stay virtual!