Do You Know What Virtual Teams Are?

A virtual team refers to workers who work together using digital tools from different geographic locations and communicate through FAX, emails, video conferencing, or voice calls. Virtual teams, known as distributed teams, geographically dispersed teams or remote team. Most importantly, virtual team members work together while sitting in different corners of the world. People work together without being physically together. Moreover, most companies make virtual teams to make the best use of their resources sitting in different parts of the world before hiring new staff.

They share data and information through emails and other modes of communication. 

While they can situate in the equivalent physical space, virtual groups are frequently distributed, working distantly in various parts of the city, state, or nation—even in different parts of the world.

Some examples of virtual teams are:

• Networked Teams: A networked team consists of cross-functional team members. Networked organizations are open to new members according to their needs.
• Parallel Teams: A parallel team consists of people from the same organization, and they are usually together for a short period. 
• Product Development Teams: The product development team consists of a group brought together because of their specialty in a particular field. 
• Service Teams: A service team consists of individuals who possess different time zones. They work freely. However, their work timing overlaps to offer consistent service. For instance, when one shift is finishing on the East Coast, the West Coast group takes control over their duties.
• Action Teams: An action team consists of individuals brought together for a short duration to respond to an immediate problem. The team dissolves once they solve the problem.

Pros Of Managing A Virtual Team:

• Happier Employees: Some employees have to spend 90-120 minutes every day to get to work. This way, much time is consumed, and people do not get time for their personal life. While working remotely as an employee at any place, you can balance your work/ life tasks that are harder to manage in a regular schedule. You can consume the time you spend travelling on some other useful work.
• More productive employees: Happier employees produce more, which implies that managers get more progress out of their workers. The productivity of workers increases when they work freely without getting stressed. Most people perform best when they are not in the office. They work best when they are not under the supervision of any person.
• Cost Savings: Much money can be saved while working remotely as no office space or leasing is required. Virtual teams do not require any real estate to operate because they already have their own space, including their home offices. Like this, a business can save a massive amount of money.
• More prominent Talent Pool & Extended Hour Coverage: Working on virtual teams opens doors for new talent as companies can hire employees from any part of the world because they need to work online only. Employers can take candidates from all over the world as employees do not have restrictions to hire in their region.
• Lower Carbon Footprint: Employees travel less, which results in lower emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as everyone is doing their work from home. Also, less office space usage means more economical usage of cooling, heating, water, and electric utilities. All this reduces carbon content in the environment and contributes positively to nature. 

Cons Of Managing A Virtual Team:

• The Trust Factor: Main cons. Of virtual team is whether the employee is going to complete their work on time or not? Employers doubt that their workers are not wasting time on their personal jobs. It requires a great effort to believe in your employees and trust them with their work. 
• Social Isolation: Members of Virtual teams feel very lonely, which leads to the organization’s social isolation. Work from home decreases the attachment between team members as no one will meet each other daily and do not get time to do chit chat. In virtual teams, reattachment increases between the team members.
• Difficult to manage the time zones: Members of virtual teamwork from different locations of the world, they have different time zones. It is challenging to manage the time zone of different workers. However, arranging a video conference meeting with varying time zones is challenging.

Ways To Set An Effective Virtual Team

Establishing a virtual team is a challenging task. Employers should keep many things in mind before making a virtual team. Some things that need to consider are given below:

• Arranging members: Select and organize employees in such a way that every virtual team is complete within itself. Choose team members after considering their skills.
• Describing purpose: Select a team that will perform work and then describes the use of the group. So, let each individual know about their role and responsibilities in the given time frame.
• Schedule time: Schedule the time of work and meeting according to the time zone of team members. Set a fixed time for team meetings that suits every individual who is working in a team.
• Effective media plan: Developing a media plan for a Virtual team is required. This will explain the type of media they need to use to contact other team members and includes the frequency of interaction. 

Ways To Manage A Virtual Team

• Regular meeting: There must be regular meetings to keep track of what is going on in the team and how close you are to achieving your goals. It helps to maintain a regular office environment for team members.
• Clear deliverables: Provide detail of every work you expect to be done. Explain clearly the expectations from each team member in the required time frame to avoid wastage of time. 
• Create a professional work environment: Try to create a professional work environment by starting and finishing the job on exact office hours. Ask team members to dress professionally and do not behave unprofessionally.

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