Virtual teams are not new, but Covid 19 has made it more widespread. Companies looking to get ahead and achieve much have adopted virtual meetings to make reaching their objectives less tasking, and your company should also do so. Virtual teams are still subjected to the challenges regular teams face. These challenges can be more pronounced as there are no physical meetings that could lead to resolving these issues.
Also, there is the fear of data security and confidentiality issues when using a platform or website to host your virtual team members’ meetings. So, you can’t just choose a platform anyhow. You have to be sure these platforms are suitable for your team. For instance, if you have virtual teams for a business, let’s say an essay help website, you would want your meetings secure, so you don’t suffer business confidentiality issues.
Learning about these challenges would help you manage your virtual teams better, and below, you would understand the 10 most significant challenges virtual teams face presently.
1. Picking a Proper Platform
There are different platforms out there that claim to offer you the best service to provide you with the best experience with your virtual team meetings. Most of these platforms are on the level of eyeson. eyeson would safeguard your privacy on their website as they pride themselves on being fully GDPR compliant. They achieve this by providing a lock feature for your meeting and allowing you to meet discreetly. Also, your data is protected as you can determine the location you want to host your meeting.
Also, Eyeson is easy to access even if you or your team members are not fantastic with tech. Eyeson creates your meeting with a link, and you can send this link to anyone you choose. These persons can join the meeting by just simply clicking the link.
Your team includes people you haven’t physically met and know nothing about. Communication problems are expected, and it’s good when this issue comes up in the early stages of working as virtual teams.
For your team to be successful, effective communication channels between team members must be open, and the correct information must be disseminated. Most team leaders do not prepare enough to deal with communication problems. They feel that since the team is virtual, technology has provided different communication means.
So, as a virtual team leader, you have to develop your team’s communication habits by making them check in compulsory all the time. Ask for feedback from teammates and also tell them to share their views on issues all the time. Also, pick a platform like Eyeson that would allow you to share your materials seamlessly
As a team leader, you must educate your virtual teammates on the organization’s structure. Doing this would allow your teammates to feel part of something. It also helps with communication as your teammates would know who to interact with in case of any emergency. Keeping the structure ambiguous would make your teammates deal with you suspiciously and breed distrust.
Informing your organizational structure teammates would benefit you as they would be more motivated to work in their roles and contribute to its success. You should check this link for more guidance.
Trust is necessary for teammates to work together. It brings cooperation and engagement among teammates, and without it, there wouldn’t be much motivation and energy to work. Building trust is harder when the interaction with your teammates is virtual, and you must do it fast, as a lack of trust creates an environment of assumptions and miscommunications.
To solve this trust problem, you have to make your teammates find you, the team leader, accessible. You have to explain to each teammate why you think they are a perfect fit for the task you have assigned to them and listen to their feedback. Also, give feedback to your teammates and follow their progress. Lastly, create bonding moments for the team by organizing a virtual date when teammates talk and get to know one another.
Your teammates might not be used to collaborating with their teammates over their computer screens. Some people are terrible with emails and have to send reminders to check their emails. Plus, operating through virtual means can be distracting for some people who have to juggle personal tasks with work by circumstances beyond their control. These issues could cause a decline in their attitude to work.
Team members don’t help the situation as they will prefer to hide their struggles from other teammates and team leaders. If not managed well, these differences could degenerate into conflicts among teammates. To solve this challenge, you have open communication lines, build relationships with team members and find and help them solve their issues.
The above showed you a glimpse of how teammates can get distracted by other things going on in their lives because they juggle so many things along with being members of a virtual team. This problem exists because teammates do not feel as though they are at work. They are so used to the traditional office setting that working in a virtual team seems different. Please encourage them to take the virtual team as they would take a regular team membership by creating a place in their houses that would feel like an office.
Regular offices have a way of keeping employees on their toes. A typical office’s buzz provides employees with the motivation to do better than they are doing. As a team leader, it’s easier for you to stroll over to a teammate’s desk and boost their morale by talking to them. You don’t have this opportunity when you are managing a virtual, but this doesn’t mean you can’t check on your teammates. You have to call, chat, mail, or text them often, depending on the style you have chosen to adopt.
The tools you will use for your objective must be uniform or determined by you as a team leader. You have to do this because different tools could lead to an unexpected outcome. You can discuss with your team members to determine what would most fit them and give you a uniform output.
Virtual teams consist of members who live in different time zones. It can be a chore to get them to attend meetings. However, you can solve this by having a rotation among team members. Doing this would foster the spirit of sacrifice and cooperation in the team. Also, using Eyeson, you would be able to schedule meetings regularly as it offers a reminder feature which allows teammates to play their time effectively.
Loss of Morale results from all the above challenges. When there is no communication and trust, the team loses morale and zeal to work. Usually, this is a problem you could have dealt with if you could see physically and study your team members’ body language, but operating virtually as a team doesn’t afford you this opportunity.
Also, morale might become low because the repetitive nature of the tasks makes them unexciting to the ten members. To solve this, gamify your tasks. You can do this even if your team comprises remote workers. Give points to your teammates for their work, give them prizes for their work, and you will see how engaged your teammates will be.