Building Trust on Virtual Teams – Part 2
In my last Post you would have read about a few tips of how to manage a Virtual team. To make sure that communication and trust are present it is necessary that all team members are on the same page about what happening in the organization as well on their dedicated projects.
Put Web2.0 to Work, make the most of rapid simple web applications to keep your team in the loop. You could use Instant Messaging for communication, research the newest tools for efficiency and collaboration. There are thousands of Web application where you can trial and use this with demo accounts to check if the application will work for you.
Hold Polls on the intranet and encourage team mates to place their votes so that processes could be improved.
Train staff by having the training session recorded so that when you are not around they are able to go back and retrain themselves. Use Project management and collaboration tools which are subscription based and do not cost that much such as Basecamp,Teamspace, Freshbooks, GoPlan etc.
Set up support systems.Provide Direction to the team as to who is responsible for what area of work. What happens if the system goes down, who would be responsible to fixing the systems, etc Have a Wiki setup so that staff could post interesting literature that they may have come across, gradually but steadily build your knowledge base. This approach allows each member to contribute to this repository rather than having dedicated staff just for resource gathering.
Every Week make it a point to book 1 hour to have a team Meeting to discuss workload, the hurdles that were overcomed and what tasks need immediate actions. All this can be recorded in a simple Online register. Officezilla is excellent when it comes to having a free Virtual Office System.
Build a Sense of “We”. Its easier when the whole team is in a specific location and you are with them too, to have the occasional “Good on you” or the Pat on the Back. Remote teams need to make greater effort to recognize each other’s accomplishments. Its very important to make sure that team members work is recognised speacially when the team is small and each one has a designated part to play in the project.
Set goals and expectations: Set and revisit expectations and goals, and have this written down.This again could be held on the intranet for reference by individual team members.
Few tools that could be used for Team Collaboration using Web 2.0 are listed below:
- Use a Simple Web Based CRM with Project Management built in Capabilities
- Have a Resource Management Application to have all your knowledge based information in one place.
- Have a Web Based Invoicing System and Time Tracking System.
- Have an Web Based Email Client
- Use Instant Messenger for Daily Communication
I hope you were able to find the post useful. I wish you the very best in managing your team. Should you have any additional views, leave a comment so that others could benefit as well.
