Chapter 4: Virtual team challenges and how to overcome them

LACK OF PROPER TOOLS

Many organizations prefer free tools for their processes. While there is nothing wrong with maintaining your budget, it is important to know what tools are necessary for success and growth.

For example, you can use a free project management tool for your processes, and it could meet your administrative requirements. But free tools often have few security measures and can put all your data at risk. Likewise, specialized tools, such as those used for design, proofreading, or market analysis, can make a big difference in your productivity and output. This is a particular challenge for virtual teams, as physical teams can still voice their concerns as a team and make changes, but virtual teams are often left to their own devices, without the right tools to perform.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

View these tools as an investment rather than an expense. Create quarterly allowances for new tools and ensure existing ones are still usable and well maintained. Do an ROI analysis before investing, if a tool can make more money than you spend on it, it's well worth the cost.

SCHEDULE MEETINGS

Meetings are one of the tedious virtual team challenges. Many companies are hiring from all over the world and team members work from different time zones. Even if your team is within one time zone, the availability of all members is a common challenge when scheduling meetings.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Make it clear that if virtual teams get additional benefits, they also have to compromise on certain factors. Timelines need to be adjusted and meetings need to be prioritized so everyone can be on the same page. Meetings are critical to the functioning of a process, they help everyone get critical updates and bring everyone on the team to agreement.

For meetings where participation is not critical, some people may be excused and you can share the recording of the meeting with them.

There are several virtual team challenges, both individual and team level. But it's important to stay in constant touch, share updates regularly and check in with each other so that nothing gets lost in the translation. This home working policy guide can provide additional help. After all, an effective team is not the perfect team, but the one who wants to adapt.