Managing a virtual team can turn out more difficult than expected. Luckily, there are some few best practices that help.
Managing virtual team implies to face a whole host of challenges, from lack of face-to-face communication to working across different time-zones. Luckily, some few best practices for remote managers have been developed in the last few years. We have summarized them up in the following list of tips.
1) Prepare a welcome manual to provide your new hires with all the necessary information about how to do things. This will help you to save a lot of time and make your new hires more productive and less questioning since the beginning.
2) Utilize some operational documents during each step of the process, so that everybody knows what have to be done next.
3) Include in your welcome manual a Communication handbook, or, better, create it as a separate manual. Here, you will lay down the directions on how to communicate with other team members.
4) Hand out a contact information sheet, or make it available as shared document to every team member.
5) Hold regular virtual meetings both individually and with the whole team. It is the only way to create cohesion within your team.
6) Make periodic reviews to inform your team members about their individual progresses. In the reviews, measure individual and team performances, in order to give adequate feedback.
7) From time to time, have some face-to-face time with your team members in order to build confidence and strengthen relations.
8) Consider time difference. You’d better change meeting times frequently, in order to avoid making the same people wake up early or stand up late.
9) Hire the right kind of workers. Select only people that are really cut out for virtual teams through a test period.
Tools are important for virtual teams. It is necessary to have an instant messenger, screen sharing, screen capture, cloud file sharing, and other collaboration tools. You’d better opt for an all-in-one solution, like R-HUB`s web video-conferencing servers http://www.rhubcom.com , rather than creating a confusing, contradictory and often difficult to manage personal set of various apps.
R-HUB has a suite of servers purposely designed for real time collaboration that gives you all the necessary functionalities to hold and manage your real time conferences. The utilization of a new technological approach allows R-HUB to knock down delays to 3-18 seconds only (usually they are 30-40 seconds) in their live streaming servers, in order to enhance interactivity.
Live interventions during a conference are supported, so that your virtual meeting looks as real as possible, and contents are shown on the whole desktop for a more effective communication. Differently from traditional live streaming products, speakers can be located everywhere in the world.
Last, don’t forget to develop the proper mindset for virtual team. The feeling of being isolated from the team can be fought by appreciating and celebrating team members’ achievements. If you manage a team composed of people from any corner of the world, working on flexible schedules is a real necessity as well as accepting all cultural differences and setting the hours when you are available online in case of need.
In conclusion, managing a virtual team takes more work than a local team, but it can be affordable. Just keep in minds these simple tricks and good practices when building your virtual team.