Why we became a virtual office company

Woman working from home with her dog sat next to her laptop
Woman working from home with her dog sat next to her laptop

Why we decided to become a virtual office company

COVID-19 made all companies and individuals rethink their stance on remote work. Find out why we became a virtual office company.

When the pandemic began, a lot changed. However, we realised there was a lot to gain from this challenging situation – from environmental impact and diversity.

While remote working had already been gaining traction in the last few years, the COVID-19 pandemic made all companies and individuals rethink their stance. As working from home became necessary without warning or guidance, it felt like an even more daunting prospect for many. 

However, the pandemic has forced us to review our processes and standards – including the benefit of being a virtual office. As we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, here’s some of the things that we learnt and where we’re headed now.

Positive environmental impact

Given the current climate crisis, the environment is one of the most important benefits to the virtual office. 

Commuting to work is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse emissions. According to Global Workforce Analytics, working from home for even half the week can reduce emissions by 54 million tons every year. The easiest way for us to reduce our greenhouse emissions as a company is simply to cut down the team’s commute time. 

A virtual office also means less waste. Offices in the UK produce an average of 500kg of waste per employee each year, with the commercial sector accounting for 12% of all UK waste. When working virtually, our team members generate less personal waste (with more food being made at home) and paper waste, as most materials are shared online. 

Lightened stress levels

Empowering our team by giving them trust and guidance is one of the pillars at RightMarket. It has also become key when working virtually. Remote work has meant everyone in the team is in control of their time and their work always gets done.

Removing the commute, saving money on food and beverage and having more efficient meetings generally leads to more productivity and a less stressful home life. A Flexjobs survey found that 73% of people had better work-life balance while working from home. 51% reported being more productive.

This does not mean we have stopped checking on our team’s mental health. Data suggests that 69% of employees experience burnout symptoms while working from home. 

If you’re considering taking the leap to a virtual office permanently, make sure to check in with your team and ensure they are finding the right balance. This will allow you to protect their mental health and retain a happier workforce.

A graph graphic shown amongst an aerial shot of a forest

Diversity

Hiring remotely has allowed us to work with different geographic and cultural backgrounds, broadening our perspective and inclusivity. This was challenging to achieve when we were looking for team members in a specific area.

For example, we hired a designer who specialises in inclusive design for our rebrand. She offered a perspective we needed and hadn’t found. The fact that she works in France would have been a deterrent before we went virtual, but was easy sailing after.

Moving remotely helped us realise that many companies fall into location bias, where they believe a cultural fit is due to where people are located. This excludes a vast amount of talented people whose values potentially fit the organisation but can’t relocate. 

In the future, the diversity advantage of the virtual office will also translate into giving opportunities to those who might have a hard time commuting or relocating, such as people with disabilities.

It means more people have access to the job market, while we benefit from a wider pool of skills that fit our goals.

Find out more

As a virtual office company, we’ve become stronger. Our workforce is more diverse, giving us the skills we need to serve our customers better. We’ve also reduced our environmental impact, helping us to contribute to the global climate change fight.

The changes have also allowed us to focus on what matters: delivering value to our customers and helping them to achieve their goals. If you’re looking for brand management support, find out why we’re the partner to turn to.

Find out why we're the partner for you

Why Us?

How to choose your brand colours

Coloured pencils lined up together
Coloured pencils lined up together

How to choose your brand colours

Think of the most iconic brands you know. You probably think about their colour palette. That’s because it’s the most memorable aspect of a brand. We created an outline that is easy to follow when choosing your colours. 

Colours have a strong and instant effect on how we see the world. From warning signs to calming spaces, our brains are wired to react to colour. Which is why choosing them for your brand can be stressful, particularly when you feel unsure about the process behind it.

Because of that, we have created an outline that is easy to follow, as well as noting things to consider when choosing the best colours for your brand.

Why brand colours are important

Research behind colour in branding is extensive. Colour consultants Colorcom collated a lot of research papers and came up with a few key findings:

The first couple of points tell us why it’s important to choose colours that mean something to your target audience, be it donors or beneficiaries. The third point shows how crucial it is to use consistent colours across all brand collaterals and marketing materials.

  1. 92.6% of people put the most importance on visual factors when purchasing products or giving money.
  2. People make a subconscious judgement about a brand, person or environment within 90 seconds of initial viewing and between 62% and 90% of that opinion is based on colour alone.
  3. Colour increases brand recognition by up to 80%.

The first couple of points tell us why it’s important to choose colours that mean something to your target audience, be it donors or beneficiaries. The third point shows how crucial it is to use consistent colours across all brand collaterals and marketing materials.

Main things to consider

Accessibility

The World Health Organization estimates that at least 2.2 billion people live with a near or distance vision impairment. And, according to Colour Blind Awareness, around 300 million people have colour blindness. Accessible colour palettes enable people with visual impairments to experience branding in the way you intend it to be experienced equally.

The number one thing to do to make sure your palette is accessible is to add enough contrast between foreground and background. Once you choose your main palette, you can check its contrast accessibility by using tools such as ContrastChecker and AccessibleColors.

This is something we were particularly careful about when doing our own rebrand back in January 2021.

Appropriateness and colour psychology

Research has found that the way people perceive a brand’s colour is not necessarily linked to whether they personally like the colour or not. It’s mostly about how appropriate the colour is for the brand’s industry and values. For example, a charity that works with children might want to stick to bright and lively colours instead of dark and muted ones. Unless those children have visual impairments, in which case ensuring the appropriate contrast ratio is even more important.

Alongside this, colour psychology studies can also give great guidance on what you want to convey. Although experts haven’t found the exact meaning behind colour because of cultural differences, there are general colour shades that convey certain feelings.

Colours
Generally accepted emotions behind colour. These normally change in non-western cultures.

Personality and essence

How do you want your brand to come across? Is your brand reliable and corporate? You can choose darker, serious colours. Is it daring and cheerful? Maybe a brighter palette is for you.

As with messaging, colours require you to think about your brand’s personality and mission.

Creating your palette and testing

There are many great tools out there to create colour palettes once you know the direction you want to go in. We like Accessible Brand Colours, Colormind, Coolors, Adobe Color. Choose a main colour (what you will use most) and then find what works as a secondary palette (accent colours and neutrals).

Once you have your palette, you can get to testing. Create a couple of branding materials, perhaps a printed poster and a social media post, that will let you see how the palette works in different contexts. Ask people you work with what they think and, if it’s available to you, user testing is a fantastic idea as well.

Conclusion

While choosing an appropriate colour palette is one of the most important parts of branding, it doesn’t need to be stressful. First, look into the meanings behind colours. Then choose a few colours after considering what your brand does, who it benefits and its personality. Finally, create your colour palette using a facilitating tool and test it with those around you. It’s okay to take your time during this step in your branding, it’s an important step.

If you have any questions or need guidance, we’re here to help. Contact Us

Find out how we can we help you

How to ensure voice consistency for charity shops

Clothes on a rail outside a charity shop
Clothes on a rail outside a charity shop

How to ensure voice consistency for charity shops

Tone of Voice is just as important as visuals when building a brand among charity shops – it’s what will ensure customer loyalty and relationships. So how do you ensure that everyone is on the same page?

Ask anyone how they distinguish charity shops, there’s a big chance they’ll mention brand colours. They have a huge role to play in attracting shoppers, of course. And being instantly recognisable is a large part of building a successful brand.

But to grow customer loyalty, you need more than an exciting palette. Your brand’s personality should help you create a unique customer experience. Something that makes your brand stand out from all other charity shops.

One of the ways to do so is to set a unique tone of voice that your customers can relate with.

Why tone of voice consistency matters

Clothes on a rail in a charity shop

Like all elements of your brand, your tone of voice should be consistent on all materials. Having this brand consistency can increase your revenue by as much as 23%.

But for the charity sector, it may be harder than it is elsewhere, in part because of the high turnover rate. But also because the sector doesn’t just rely on full-time employees. Your volunteers are in contact with a huge number of people too. And yet, they rarely have the opportunity to attend your marketing meetings.

So how do you achieve that when so many people are involved with design production

Tone of voice is more than just what you say, it’s how you say it. A clear and consistent tone of voice is an invaluable asset to your brand because it builds trust with your customers increasing their long-term value.

Sarah Joynt-Bowe

Strategy Director

Things you can do

You need to encourage people to use what your marketing team has worked on. It’s all about educating and trusting people in your team:

  • Train your shop managers on brand guidelines, including tone of voice.
  • Educate fundraisers and volunteers about the importance of brand consistency.
  • List words to avoid when communicating about your brand.
  • Write up repeatable messages people can choose from when creating designs.

We’ve chosen to centralise the production of some of our branded designs to simplify our process. Having hundreds of shops producing their own content isn’t sustainable. It can’t guarantee consistency and that’s too important for us.

Helena Forrest

Marketing Manager

sue ryder

How we help to ensure consistency

Many of our users don’t have marketing expertise, so we worked on a built-in solution for our design platform. This is what inspired us to include a Tone of Voice Assistant*. It’s an easy way to prevent errors that also offers on-brand alternatives people can learn from.

We’re also working on a new feature that’ll make sign-off processes outdated. Choosing from a selection of pre-approved messages, users will be able to create designs in line with your brand voice. That’ll prevent users waiting for sign-off from using tools that can’t guarantee on-brand materials.

* Contact us to find out more.

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To uncover how RightMarket can help you achieve brand consistency and trust, so you can focus on maximising performance.

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Our simple steps to clear up compliance confusion with charity laws

Charity volunteer moving boxes
Charity volunteer moving boxes

3 simple steps to clear up compliance confusion with charity laws

The charity sector is built on collaboration – sharing insight and best practices. Which is a good thing because that’s also what we like to do at RightMarket. We started partnering with the Chartered Institute of Fundraising in 2018, and have learned a lot about compliance with charity laws and regulations. So we thought you’d like to get clarity on what you absolutely need to keep in mind when creating branded assets.

When operating in the charity sector, you must comply with charity laws. We have built a framework for our customers, informed by the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, so they feel safe managing their brand. We’ve listed three rules to follow when you are checking compliance with your marketing materials.

What are the 3 rules for compliance?

There can be a lot of confusion and misinformation around compliance. So here are three requirements for fundraising material you need to be aware of and act on:

  1. It is a legal requirement to state that you are a registered charity on all notices, advertisements and documents issued by the charity, or on the charity’s behalf that solicit money. That applies if your charity is registered in England & Wales and had a gross income of over £10,000 in the last financial year.
  2. Volunteer fundraisers must use the expression ‘in aid of’ on fundraising material to distinguish it from fundraising carried out by the charity itself. As a charity, you must ensure your fundraisers understand they are responsible for any liability relating to their fundraising and its organisation.
  3. The Fundraising Regulator badge can only be used on fundraising material by charities that have registered with the Fundraising Regulator. The Fundraising Regulator takes unauthorised use of the Fundraising Badge very seriously.

For more information about compliance with charity laws and regulations, we encourage you to look into the standards section on the CIoF’s website.

References
Charity Legislation- Part 4 section 39 of the Charities Act [Charities Act 2011] 
Charity Legislation- Section 9, 9.1.6. of the Fundraising Code [Code of Fundraising Practice 2019] 
Fundraising Best Practices- Section 5.3.1 of the Fundraising Code [Code of Fundraising Practice 2019] 

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