Many businesses experience growing pains related to personnel. So finding a beneficial solution to overcome those challenges is necessary for success. For example, you may not have the time to manage a new team. Perhaps, you do not have the physical space and infrastructure to accommodate several new employees working in your office. Nonetheless, you may urgently need their services, and outsourcing the work to a contractor may not be the right solution. Another idea to consider is the use of virtual teams.
With a closer look at what virtual teams are and how they can benefit you, you may be ready to start putting together a team of your own.
What Are Virtual Teams?
Virtual teams are essentially remote workers. Rather than having one employee work remotely, however, the team may work together as a unit despite being geographically distant from each other. They may work together to accomplish a common goal such as:
- Provide customer service to your clients;
- Answer support and tech questions;
- Collaborate on a financing project;
- Complete other specific goals and tasks.
Unlike contract workers, a virtual team is a part of the company. Each employee must adhere to company policies and procedures. Each may also receive full company benefits just as any other employee would. As a business owner, you will have greater control over the worker’s work day and responsibilities than you would with a contractor.
Who Uses Virtual Teams?
Many smaller and larger businesses around the globe are now using virtual teams to enjoy various benefits. Because of the popularity of a remote work opportunity, it may be easier for businesses to attract top talent for a remote team. This is because many people enjoy the comfort and convenience associated with working from home.
There are also great benefits for businesses to enjoy through the use of a virtual team for one or more projects. Because remote teams can be used for a wide range of functions, businesses in all fields may benefit from putting together a virtual team.
Ways in Which Virtual Teams Can Help Your Business
If you are trying to decide if using virtual teams is a good solution for your business, it may be helpful to analyze the benefits associated with doing so. A virtual team is a cost-effective solution to consider. While you will still have to pay salary and benefits, you will not have to devote physical space in your office to the team. You can save on utilities expenses, office supplies, equipment and more as a result. Virtual workers are less likely to call in sick or to take time off for personal reasons. So you may be enjoy greater productivity from a remote team as well.
The ability to save money and to be more productive with the completion of certain tasks can be financially beneficial to your company. When you compare these benefits against the costs associated with hiring an in-house team, you will see that a virtual team makes great sense.
5 Tips for Successfully Using Virtual Teams
If you have decided to start using virtual teams in your office environment, you may be ready to start hiring individuals and actively managing them. As you might imagine, these processes will be significantly different with a remote team. You can follow these helpful tips to more successfully implement a virtual team in your organization.
1. Choose the Right Individuals
One of the most important factors that will affect the success of virtual teams is your selection of the right team members. Look for individuals who have worked remotely in the past. Verify their references to ensure that they are dependable, independent and focused.
Remember that you will need to hire a manager who has experience managing a remote team as well.
2. Consider How You Will Monitor Their Work
Because of the prevalence of virtual teams, there are now many watchdog software programs that you can use to monitor work hours, performance and more.
You can explore technological solutions available to assist with this process. Also, you should implement the use of the right program before you hire your first employee.
3. Set Up Clear Goals and Rules
You should allow some flexibility with remote workers. But you should also set up very clear goals and rules for your team. Each team member should be held accountable for his or her contributions to the team objective.
In addition, there should be clear rules, such as hours when the individual will be available for communication during the day and when he or she will actively be working on projects. This can be verified by the technological solutions that you have implemented.
4. Implement Easy Communications Solutions
Your remote team will be required to work together as a unit. This means that they should have several quick and easy ways to communicate with each other as well as with others in the office.
Setting up an intra-office chat or messaging feature may work well. You also need to use cloud-based technology to easily share files.
5. Encourage Active Collaboration
The success of your team may lie in their ability to work together actively. This means that active collaboration should be encouraged. This may include weekly meetings so that all workers can touch bases.
This may be a video-teleconference or a simple phone conference call. You may also need to create presentations and share them during online meetings.
Virtually Wrapping Up
As you can see, it will take a considerable amount of time and effort to put together the right team to work remotely. You just need to make sure that the right professionals have been hired. After this, the manager should actively work to ensure productivity from all responsible workers and should promote collaboration and communication as much as possible.
The right virtual team can benefit your office tremendously. So, you can explore the benefits and technological solutions available to facilitate the process today.
The images are from depositphotos.com.