Connor BrookeLast year, Yahoo!’s Marissa Mayer drew some flak for putting an end to the company’s work-from-home policy. A week later, Best Buy followed suit. It should be noted that these two companies both onboarded new CEOs at the time, and both had been struggling for some time. Telecommuting, according to them, didn’t fit into their turnaround plans.
On the flipside, tech giants IBM and Salesforce are showing no signs of putting a stop to their telecommuting practices as of yet, which goes to show that telecommuting – and virtual collaboration, for that matter – works like a charm for these two companies.
How to make virtual collaboration work
If telecommuters, remote workers and distributed teams are part and parcel of your ongoing business efforts, collaboration, being a force that brings these disparate components together, is a must. But with lack of face-to-face communication that collocated teams enjoy to foster personal and/or out-of-office relationships – hence, bonding that cultivates trust – virtual collaboration can become difficult.
Here are five tips to make collaboration work for geographically dispersed teams:
#1. Set ground rules.
At the outset, make your expectations clear. Examples of ground rules can include the following:
- Full participation is required during virtual meetings and conference calls, meaning, no other tasks should be done while the meeting is ongoing, including side conversations.
- Everyone should come to meetings prepared and ready to share their thoughts.
- When someone is speaking, interruptions must be discouraged, whether or not people agree with the ideas presented.
#2. Make communication a priority.
Effective communication is what keeps teams together, whether onsite or remote, and effective communication starts with listening. This makes team members feel respected and that their contributions are valued, creating an atmosphere of openness that encourages creative thinking and issue resolution.
#3. Align personal and professional goals.
WIIFT stands for “what’s in it for them?” And leaders nowadays aren’t naïve to think that their team members do their level best just because it’s good for the project, or the company, for that matter. Remote or not, if you want your team members to make the business’ goals their goals, appeal to their self-interest.
For example, if you’re employing the services of a freelance designer for the first time, one way to ensure he’ll go the extra mile is a provision stating he’ll be awarded other design projects the company needs done if the first few turn out to be really good. A win-win all around, right?
#4. Make way for employee bonding.
As Aristotle puts it: “Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.” Bottom line, humans are inherently social beings, hence, the proliferation of team buildings and social functions to promote bonding and trust among leaders and team members.
What about teams distributed across the globe? Surely, it’s going to take a lot of effort and resources to get everyone in the same physical location for some bonding time, right?
Here are sample activities for virtual team building:
- Designate a virtual water cooler where everyone can talk about anything and everything under the sun, like their hobbies and interests, what they did during the weekend, what they plan to do for the upcoming holidays, what they think of the latest Marvel flick, and so on.
- Create a virtual board where members can upload photos of their families and the places they’ve been to, or if they’re the creative kind, art projects they’re working on.
#5. Leverage the right technologies.
Technology has gone a long way, and with the emergence of Web 2.0, communication platforms have become more interactive. From static pages that were primarily used to retrieve employee information, like contact numbers, leaves accrued, and others, web-based intranet software now include features that allow employees to create, store, share and retrieve content specific to their unique needs.
Add in real-time capability, and the technology of your choice can be an invaluable instrument to engender effective collaboration for your distributed teams.
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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Great article, that is surely relevant to lots of growing companies. I know you briefly touched on virtual meetings, but for me that’s a really main point in staying connected with your company when you work virtually. I currently live in Europe and telecommute for an American Marketing company (I know, it’s a tough gig). We use Google Hangouts for our meetings so we can all see each other’s faces, share screens and interact with each other in a way that is as close to in-person meetings as possible. Video chat, in my opinion, is one of the top reasons our company is so successful with virtual positions. Video chats also help cut down on the temptation to mutli-task during conference calls. Finally, through video chat, I’m able to actively participate in meetings and workshops with our clients. It could be argued that conference calls with audio-only could give you similar results, but certainly not the same personalized feeling.
Like I said, this is a great article, just wanted to throw in a plug for the importance of video chat and virtual meetings. Thanks for your post!
Thank you for the kind words, Beth. You’re right to emphasize the points you made. Thanks for chiming in!
I have to give emphasis on this one – #5. Leverage the right technologies. I work from home and everything is nothing without technology, no one can actually work anywhere at anytime without the tools that we use to make our work life more easier. Marissa Mayer may have some issues with her employees who are telecommuting, but for me, this type of work is pretty much a fit to those who wanted to put an end on how hard it is to commute. I remember one time when I was going through my daily study about “productivity”, I read an article where Richard Branson talks about work from home as the future in the workforce. http://www.staff.com/blog/richard-branson-one-day-offices-will-be-a-thing-of-the-past/ I wonder if you guys will agree on his thoughts but I think a lot of people are liking this concept —> telecommuting.
Thanks for reading and commenting, James. I appreciate your thoughts on the subject. Personally, I agree with Richard Branson. Telecommuting means savings from productivity loss brought about by long commutes, for one. And then there’s overhead savings as well.
Thanks for the article, Maricel. Good job! In case with distributed teams (and even working in neighboring buildings)communication and, consequently, collaboration is vital. Choosing the right tool should be Issue #1. I guess Skype and e-mail are not rather effective since they are ‘too slow’ for speedy modern business world. We use Comindware Project (http://www.comindware.com/project/) which has an integrated option for collaboration – real time communication, document sharing and storing, and discussion on project matters. All in one, I guess.
By following above mentioned points and using tools like webex, R-HUB web conferencing servers etc. teams can effectively collaborate online.