How to Succeed in Virtual Team Building

Working from home has progressively increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, and virtual teams have become more prevalent as a solution to help maintain both productivity and employee well-being. There are two types of virtual teams having different objectives and solving various types of tasks (CIPD, 2020).

  • Two or more people work together to achieve common goals.
  • At least one member of the team works in a different location or at a different time.

Figure 1: How to built trust in a virtual environment (Source: Socialresearch, 2015) 


Challenges faced by virtual teams

Virtual teams face more challenges in staying effective than face-to-face teams (Serrat, 2009).

This is because team members share less information with each other when communicating via electronic media, have a more difficult time interpreting and understanding the information they get, and the introduction of creating effective virtual teams provides delayed feedback.

The challenges of virtual communication: The easiest way of communication is face-to-face conversation, but teams that use video conferencing are better than teams that just use audio or written communication as it is coming close to the effectiveness of face-to-face teams.

Building and maintaining virtual employee identities: Creating and maintaining virtual employee identities in modern organizations is a new challenge. Virtual employees must feel on par with other employees in the organization and that their unique personal and professional situations are identified.

Commitment to learning and development: Modern organizations must commit to, and make resources available for virtual workplace training and other continuous learning and development activities.

Building Trust

Trust in a virtual environment is built on the delivery of the task at hand rather than interpersonal relationships. Trust is a much more limiting factor in virtual teams than in face-to-face teams. It is useful to recognize the different forms that exist in professional relationships. HR practitioners and managers should focus on the following to build trust in virtual teams.

Invest in team-building.

Protect the team from negative behaviour.

Be mindful about sharing negative feedback.

Effective information-sharing

Virtual teams are less effective at sharing information. They refrain from offering information about how to work together and handle social difficulties, instead focusing on sharing knowledge that is strictly related to solving the problem or issues at hand. The three key areas for ensuring effective information-sharing are

Proactively diversify the information shared within the team.

Build up the team’s transactive memory system.

Hold debriefing sessions.

Teamwork and co-ordination

Setting up teamwork training sessions: it will help virtual teams improve their activities and results by providing teamwork training. This will help them improve their activities and results.

Clear up duties, especially the job of coordinator: Managers and HR professionals should help virtual teams achieve their duties and other requirements for the betterment of the team’s tasks and progress.

Co-ordinate the team’s communication: It assists virtual teams in setting communication standards from the start as feedback is more important than hurting the expectations of other team members.

Conclusion

Due to the pandemic, virtual teams are a necessity in today’s work environment. They rely on electronic communications, have fewer things in common, and may have less overlap of working hours. These challenges can be minimized by the use of rich media such as video-conferencing to communicate, build trust and share information.

References

CIPD (2020). Developing Effective Virtual Teams. [Online]
Available from: https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/developing-virtual-teams-1_tcm18-76431.pdf
[Accessed 17 December 2021].

Serrat, O. (2009). Managing Virtual Teams. [Online]
Available from: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/27610/managing-virtual-teams.pdf
[Accessed 17 December 2021].

Socialresearch (2015). How to built trust in a virtual environment. [Online]
Available at: https://rampages.us/socialresearch/2015/06/23/how-to-build-trust-in-virtual-environment/
[Accessed 17 December 2021].

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Manoj Thudawahewa17 December 2021 at 01:05

    This is a very important topic that need to be discussed upon new normal. This will be a good strategy to keep the employee engagement during the pandemic. Technical barrier will be a one of key concern intern of connectivity. Informative article which explain well about virtual team building.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ARSHAD MBA17 December 2021 at 07:05

    Virtual Solution is an new trend on current context it's more effective on the development on many segment. very informative article.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Benjamin Thason18 December 2021 at 02:07

    Working in virtual platform is new concept in this era with pandemic situation , there are good practices which are cost effective and target oriented can be learned and there are many things and practices which created negativity should not be continued in future

    ReplyDelete
  4. Steffni_D18 December 2021 at 06:58

    Because of the pandemic, virtual teams are a requirement in today's work climate, but they face a number of obstacles, such as relying on electronic communications, having less things in common, and possibly having less overlap of working hours. These obstacles can be mitigated by utilizing rich media such as video-conferencing to interact, develop trust, and share information.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Manoj Jude19 December 2021 at 02:23

    Virtual team building is a new concept to Sri lankans and this often connect people at home where the easy going atmosphere would certainly encourage staff to speak freely and attend to work with a calm quiet manner. But there are some negative implications that, you directly cannot monitor them and getting the face 2 face inputs are being challenged and not everyone is not IT savvy -this could also a problem in engaging staff effectively

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dilrukshi indurugolla19 December 2021 at 08:50

    A virtual team, or remote team, is a group of people who collaborate using virtual collaboration and communication tools.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Asma Nafaz19 December 2021 at 09:58

    Virtual team building is a trend due to pandemic situations. It is compulsory to build virtual teams when people move to remote working.

    ReplyDelete
  8. SOS Booster6 May 2022 at 05:11

    Looking for a Virtual team building company in India? Team building activities are a great way to connect with your colleagues and work together more effectively and enjoyable. We create fun online team building games and activities for you.

    ReplyDelete

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