Virtual Teams - Challenges and Opportunities

The pandemic situations have no doubt, forced organisations to opt for Virtual Teams. But, can COVID be given credit for virtual teams alone? Were Virtual Teams 'new normal' before pandemic as well?

Virtual teams are the teams in which team members are geographically or organizationally distant and are bought together using information and communication technology to work in an interdependent manner for achieving a common goal or task. This new electronic way of integrating teams has created new challenges as well as opportunities for both the team managers and workers. This article will focus on the challenges and opportunities procreated by virtual teams for managers and workers, also different ways of addressing the challenges.

Regardless of pandemic, it was estimated that the virtual teams will increase by 34% by 2021(Walsh 2019). As this kind of team shrinks the global world into a single platform. It is creating ample opportunities for managers to create an efficient framework and, attract the workforce by providing them chances at maintaining work-life balance and increasing job satisfaction.

The major opportunities associated with virtual teams is enhanced problem solving, innovation and management. Due to telecommuting, the managers are now capable of bringing the talented team members together irrespective of geographical location and time constraints. This ensures that team members have flexible working hours and can work according to their own time zones. Also, the workers need not leave their homes for work. Managers have a dual advantage of reduced economic costs and time taken for completing the assigned work. Hence, virtual teams provide an opportunity of integrating work and completing the task more effectively (Jimenez et al. 2017).

Further, virtual teams can improve the ability of teams to solve problems. The team members of virtual teams usually belong to diverse cultural backgrounds and hence, they can think of solutions from wider perspectives. This allows them to gather information from varied networks, thus aids in providing creative and innovative solutions for problems. Managers can tap this benefit as problems can be solved at a very fast pace and decisions can be made effectively. Also, diverse workgroups can lead to cognitive dissonance. This will motivate the workers to broaden their thinking and promote learning hence, acting as a motivator contributing to job satisfaction.

The post-industrial period has witnessed an increase in the number of women entering the workforce. Due to some family obligations, the working women struggle to maintain the work-family balance. But, telecommuting and virtual working have enabled the women to work from home, helping them to maintain the role of both mother and employee while working. This has also enabled managers in maintaining women team members during the maternity period.

Furthermore, it can be said that the growing trend of virtual teams goes hand in hand with the latest trend of the gig economy and freelancing. The workers looking for temporary jobs and gigging can get involved in virtual teams and, managers can recruit and retain workers with the right skills.

Another major opportunity associated with the growth of virtual teams is the millennial generation. The baby boomers are on the verge of retirements and the millennial generation is all set to be part of the growing knowledge economy. The millennials can adapt the technological changes at a faster pace and can handle a variety of tasks effectively. Hence, managers can effectively develop their team and can easily coordinate with them.

The easy work patterns and growing trends of globalization and technological advancements has evidently intensified working through virtual teams. But, it has created challenges for team managers as well as team members. These challenges include communication (lack of physical and social interactions), trust, accountability, reliability, geographical constraints (distance and time), assessment and diversity. Other challenges that can be faced by the workers include workaholism (work-family balance), space and noise management issues, social isolation, technophobia, tax consequences.

Technophobia refers to disorders dealing with fear and anxiety of advanced technology and is known to affect about one-third proportion of the population in the modern world (Ha and Thorsteinsson 2011). Most of the employees working in the modern world are computer oriented and yet some of the valuable and experienced employees are uncomfortable with technological gadgets. The introduction of virtual teams has greatly imposed the challenge of incorporating those employees in virtual teams. For overcoming this challenge, the virtual teams need to be designed in such a manner that it can accommodate every member comfortably. This can be ensured by extensive training, guiding manuals and continuous and fast response from managers and co-team members. Any technical support if necessary should be readily provided to everyone.

Communication by means of technology imposes a great challenge which hinders the ability of managers to physically interact with the team members and convey information and messages. Computer-mediated communication can generate problems by creating confusion, misunderstanding, information distortion, and knowledge management. Physical communication is thought to be a better mode as information can be transmitted through facial expressions, non-verbal communication, gestures too. Further, virtual teams employ members from diverse cultural groups and hence, it poses a challenge because effective communication across different cultures requires trust enhancing abilities, maintaining and building new relations and sensitivity.

For overcoming this challenge, managers need to adapt their behaviour and communication skills according to team requirements. They need to motivate and inspire team members to communicate with each other through social activities and get-togethers. This can improve team cohesion and togetherness, further improving team success. Workers can themselves feel unvalued and some members can dominate discussions undermining other members thinking. Hence, to avoid any disparities and issues relating to communication skills, team members need to follow rules of effective communication and must show higher emotional intelligence.

For the success of any team, mutual trust and accountability play an indispensable role. Developing and maintaining trust is necessary from both managers as well as workers' end. Workers can promote trust by being responsible and accountable for the assigned task. Team members can trust each other if they are dependable and deliver what they promised. Initially, most of the virtual teams were formed for a shorter time and hence, it created problems as trust development takes time.

Nowadays, virtual teams are working for a permanent basis and for longer durations and hence, trust-building is easy. For effective trust-building, managers can promote trust-building by assigning tasks promoting interdependencies. This can enhance coherence and may improve team success. For gaining the trust of team members, e-managers can provide a positive work environment, set some standard norms and procedures, effectively communicate the right tasks through proper channels and create a sense of respect among other members (Lilian 2014).

Time and distance are the key issues faced by the e-managers as team members are globally scattered. Distance and variable time zones can have a profound impact if they don’t overlap with other team members. This can create overburden both for workers as well as managers. E-managers have a hard time coordinating members as well as tasks due to this particular factor and, workers can stress out easily as a mode of communicating is just electronic. To tackle this problem, the workers, as well as managers, need to address this issue by acting and responding fast to the distance and time-related restraints so that dispersed team-mates can feel secure and close while working.

Managers, as well as workers, need to mitigate actively to any kind of stress-induced by strict schedules and deadlines, they need to work quickly and coordinate with teams as soon as possible (Cummings 2011). Diversity in terms of culture, location, values and communication practices among team members creates a different level of challenge for managers and workers. The diverse nature of team members affects behaviour and working patterns. This can complicate the organization, communication, and execution of work. This can create coordination and coherence issues among workers. Also, it creates cognitive dissonance among team members and hence, team members should use this fact for enhancing their thinking skills and not consider it an unhealthy competition.

E-managers should closely examine the teams for avoiding any kind of task conflicts, have an adaptive and sensitive approach to all the team members. Hence, they should promote team building by responding to the needs of every team member, handle conflicting situations if they arise, apply friendly and positive workplace, develop coherence among diversified teams and overcome the hindrance of communication barrier if any.

Furthermore, the assessment of performance in virtual teams becomes a cumbersome task for managers and, workers feel that their work is not recognized. For addressing this concern, specific standards and procedures need to be maintained that help in assessing the performance of teams. For recognition of worker’s effort, evaluations and rewards need to be set up. By clearly defining performance attributes and measures, both managers and workers can benefit. E-managers can have timely feedback and surveying to ensure that improvements occur, and any problems are reported promptly. Implementation of motivation theories can leverage the recognition of workers' effort by evaluating job satisfaction.

Other challenges associated with working in virtual teams include a sense of isolation among workers, poor time management, lack of proper office spaces and unintended tax effects. As virtual team members work from different time zones, they don’t have any time constraints and are found working for extensive hours. This challenge can be encountered by inculcating the sense of time management among workers by managers. As virtual teams don’t interact with each other off computer screens, it can create a feeling of social isolation among the team workers. These working styles also don’t accommodate meetings or lunches or other social gatherings and hence, can intensify isolations. Managers and workers can organize some off-work sessions, where team members can interact informally among themselves. It can be in the form of team success parties and physical conferences for addressing issues and concerns. This can have a dual benefit of knowing team members well and understanding different diverse cultures. It can also promote trust-building and team coherence.

The extensive growth of virtual teams or global virtual teams has attracted many researchers who focus on understanding the dynamics of virtual teams. It is quite evident that working in virtual teams creates challenges and opportunities for team managers as well as workers. Managers and workers are continuously challenged for developing flexible organizations and strategically help in competing with market forces. Although, virtual teams are the perfect solution for tackling the changes that are taking place in work culture and workforce. It is equally important to address the challenges that hinder the overall growth of working virtually. Changes in the behavioural and communication skills of both managers and workers are the key factor that can help in addressing the challenges of virtual teams. From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the strategies that focus on transforming challenges to opportunities need to be developed and implemented for the success of virtual teams.

FURTHER READINGS

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