Managing virtual teams: Keeping members on the same page without being in the same place poses challenges for managers - Workplace Trends

HR Magazine, June, 2002 by Carla Joinson

As communication technologies improve, employees often exchange ideas and information with distant colleagues. Most workers can benefit from this ability to touch base with people beyond a particular set of walls. But what happens when a project or task depends on the ongoing cooperation of employees who are miles apart?

Virtual teams--usually formed when geographical separations can't be bridged--may be the answer. By definition, they are composed of members who rarely, if ever, meet physically.

Not a Cure-All

Companies may form virtual teams to get employees out of the office and closer to customers, to unify a function across the organization, or to cut time and travel costs. Or a company in an undesirable location may desperately need to recruit employees who have the right skills but don't want to move. Sometimes companies use virtual teamwork to integrate employees who were added through mergers and acquisitions.

That's what happened at USFilter in Palm Desert, Calif. When the company began growing, it didn't make sense to relocate numerous employees who became part of the company as a result, says Joy Gaetano, SPHR, senior vice president of corporate human resources. Instead, certain departments, such as the company's legal division, simply became virtual teams.

"We are part of a global company with operations in 100 countries and over 500 locations," says Gaetano. "We wanted to capitalize on talent within our organization, and we made a commitment to use technology and e-business practices to do so."

An increasingly global economy has fueled the rise in virtual teams, says Tom Vines, SPHR, director of talent at IBM Corp. in Somers, N.Y. "IBM began using virtual teams in the 1970s as we began to deploy more of our products globally," he says. About one-third of the company's workers will participate in virtual teams at some point.

When IBM's leaders need to staff projects, they give a list of skills they need to HR, which pulls together a pool of people for them. "The manager decides whether the team needs to be virtual or not," says Vines. "It's the skills and talent that are important, rather than face time.

Virtual teams work well for managers whose employees often travel, says Cheryl Wyrick, SPHR, Ph.D., associate professor of management and human resources at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. "If people are in sales, for instance, do you really need them all in one place--particularly if they're in charge of a region that involves more than one state?"

There are industries, such as manufacturing, in which virtual teams won't work. "Any type of work that's very sequential or integrated can pose problems for virtual teams," Wyrick says. "This includes some types of project work, where everyone has to be together for back-and-forth conversation."

Virtual teams aren't miracle cures, stresses Roger Ballentine, co-director of the Center for the Study of Work Teams (CSWT) at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. "Virtual teams should exist only for the same reason that any team exists," he says. Teams must have a common purpose, share responsibility for specific outcomes and work interdependently.

"If these reasons for a team exist, it makes sense to try a virtual team when geography demands it," Ballentine continues. "But a virtual team without the 'team' built in regresses to telephone calls and faxes pretty quickly."

Making It Work

Though many experts believe that co-located teams still work best, most feel that virtual teams can be successful if they are formed, trained and managed correctly. Team members must be able to communicate well and work independently. They also should possess a good work ethic, initiative and creativity. Employees who are stimulated by interaction with other people or who need external structure to stay on track may be unsuccessful in a virtual environment without training and acclimation.

Employees' training needs can be hard to assess, because any struggles they have take place behind the scenes. For task-related skills training, managers must encourage team members to make their needs known.

The CSWT has found five areas of training that are especially useful for virtual team members:

* Understanding the technology infrastructure.

* Using technology tools.

* Collaborating effectively in a work group.

* Conducting virtual meetings.

* Planning and managing tasks.

It helps when members know "how to focus the mikes, or know how to swing the camera to focus on who's speaking" during a meeting, says Bob Francouer, SPHR, an associate with the CSWT.

Team managers must be comfortable with relinquishing traditional control over their employees, while remaining committed to mentoring and evaluating them. Additionally, virtual team managers must pay particular attention to the challenges posed by the physical separation between members.

Managers should apply to the virtual setting the techniques they use when building traditional teams. "Virtual teams need to stop and think about all the things we do in a co-located team and emulate those actions," says Carl Worthy, an expert on remote workers and president of Worklogix, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that provides corporations with productivity and workflow processing systems. "Break down these co-located team actions and formalize them. Create an agreement, with team buy-in." The agreement can cover issues such as how quickly e-mail should be answered, when videophones should be used and who has authority to make decisions.