Virtual Teams – A Business Solution

In today’s economy, more than ever, business is being conducted virtually with benefits ranging from improved employee morale to the ability to bring together the best talent for multi-functional project teams. Work teams, and their individual workers, are increasingly defined more by their uniformity of purpose and less by their geographic location. By 2011, it is anticipated that 46.6 million corporate employees globally will spend at least one day per week teleworking, and 112 million will work from home at least one day per month1. This paradigm shift from colocation to virtual teleworking and its benefits suggests that organizations should invest in the development and implementation of best practices around global processes and governance to support the implementation and management of virtual work technologies and teams.

Virtual teaming, just like any other business concept, will only yield the desired benefits for the organization if implemented correctly. For purposes of this article our focus is on geographically dispersed virtual teams. We realize virtual teams come in many different varieties (e.g., networked, parallel, project/product development, production, service, management, action, etc.), but the common thread in our global economy is that these teams increasingly span different locations and time zones. Our intent is to provide insight into the benefits and considerations for such an undertaking from the employer, project/project team, customer, and employee perspectives.

The Benefits of Virtual Teaming

In the current economic environment it is challenging for new ideas to be implemented without a detailed business case being developed to demonstrate bottom-line benefits for that initiative. In the case of virtual teaming, it is highly unlikely that executives will want to spend money on implementing new technology and re-defining how people work without an understanding of the benefits this will bring to the organization.

The lists below highlight just a sample of the benefits associated with virtual teaming:

Best Practices/Consideration points

When building your plan of action for the implementation of virtual work environments there are many factors to consider which if not addressed will lead to problems in your virtual teaming environment; this section looks to highlight some of these and provide best practice solutions for your organization.

• What reasons may be driving virtual teaming in your organization
• Your organizational goals may involve the merger with and/or acquisition of another company, expansion, or simply to improve service to your clients. It is important to know why you want to undertake this kind of implementation before you go forward and by doing so you can measure your success against those objectives.
• Is your organization ready?
• Assessing your organization’s readiness is important in achieving the benefits and weathering the challenges of this implementation. As part of the readiness assessment component in your planning you will ask yourself whether your organization can handle this change, are your processes mature in regard to defining project specifics and goals as well as what are the personalities and work styles of your individual workers and the roles they play. An existing organization that cannot successfully deliver projects/serve customers will not suddenly become successful by introducing virtual teams; the underlying problems need to be resolved first.
• How will your teams communicate?
• Problems with communication is the single most important reason why virtual teams fail and it is imperative that management resolve this issue upfront with a solution that fits their organization. Communication issues can be resolved by:
• Introducing communication technologies (see below)
• Creating a communication code of conduct
• Providing clear status reports and direction to your team members
• Developing trust within the team/fostering a team spirit
• Provide common access to documentation, etc.
• Set up time for team members to meet each other face to face
• What technologies should you consider to facilitate the work of our remote staff and teams?
   
  There are three main categories of tools to investigate to serve your business processes.
• Remote meeting technologies include teleconference, video conference, and web conference services which allow your teams to meet real-time even though they are located in different parts of the world.
• Collaborative work applications such as instant messaging, wikis, ftp sites, and other project specific collaboration site technologies (e.g., MS SharePoint, IBM Websphere, etc.) enable project teams to create, discuss, and review project plans, statuses and deliverables as well as share information in a centralized manner.
• Device and support technologies to keep the individual worker operational and connected. Among these tools are personal data assistants (e.g., Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile, iPhone, etc.), remote broadband including mobile connectivity cards, unified communications, desktop sharing for support as well as the maturity of your laptop support (e.g., virtual private network - “VPN”, remote back-up, spyware, etc.)
• What impacts will these changes have on your human resources, IT, and facilities policies?
• When you introduce a change to how your business operates, you are inevitably changing your business’ core human resource, facilities, and IT policies. In the case of human resources you will review and update many core processes and policies including hours of work, coverage of expenses for needed technologies, workers compensation, and on-boarding. Facilities policy will involve, among others items, the determination of the mix of remote work sites that will be allowed and the facilities agreements, business continuity plans, and disaster recover plan that need to be in place. In terms of IT policies, organizations will need to address the security issues associated with keeping information assets secure as well as how to obtain technical support when working remotely.

Conclusion

There are clear and demonstrable benefits associated with the implementation of virtual teams within your organization. However building your plan for growing the virtual team presence will require consideration of the wide range of factors we have discussed in this article. This plan should link your business drivers and current business readiness to the optimal technologies, processes and procedures to allow you to realize the benefits and mitigate the challenges of virtual teaming. By developing your plan with these factors in mind, you give your organization the best chance at a successful virtual teaming implementation and sustainable change to your business operations.

Footnotes:
¹Gartner. Dataquest Insight: Teleworking, The Quiet Revolution (2007 Update).