A Booster Shot for Virtual Team Collaboration: Part 3: Orientation
Author: Clark Shah-Nelson, MA, DBA Candidate
Hello, Human Resources! Forming a new virtual team or looking to enhance an already existing one? This series of posts started by looking at technology tool selection, then forming a virtual team with strategies for conducting a search and interview process. Now we turn toward orienting the team (aka induction). Research shows that the way organizations foster induction for the team can affect the overall effectiveness of the team in the long run. Let’s take a look at recommendations from a recent systematic review that synthesized findings from over twenty studies taking place in over 40 countries and across many sectors.
Building Connectedness
Induction to the team is notably important across many research articles, sectors, and geographical regions. Not only do virtual teams need to be oriented to the organization and culture, they need to be able to form close personal connections to one another. Whenever possible, researchers recommend at least some collocated face-to-face time, early in the induction process. Even if the teams will soon be communicating entirely through technology tools, collocated face-to-face time has been found to be the quickest way to help people get to know one another and start to build trust with one another. The time can be spent touring physical facilities and offices to get to know other colleagues who work on-site; getting to know each other’s backgrounds, living situations and working styles and ensuring that the team has an understanding of shared goals, objectives and expectations related to the organization and/or projects. Even just one or two days of pre-planned ice breakers, tours and opportunities to dine and socialize can make a large difference in helping your team form connections.
If getting together in person is not possible, synchronous videoconferencing meetings are the next best thing. Like face-to-face induction, virtual synchronous induction meetings should focus on getting to know each other as people, ice breakers and socialization in addition to orientation to tools, technologies and standards for team communication and collaboration. The formation of social bonds at this stage will be vital for team success. Research has also shown that stronger social ties and trust may eventually mean less need for synchronous communications.
Norming
In addition to socialization and forming strong ties, it is useful in the induction phase to help team members get to know what skills, knowledge and experience others bring to the table, as well as start to identify knowledge gaps. Knowledge sharing has been found to have a strong link to virtual team success. Knowledge awareness (who knows what?) and transfer of knowledge among team members are also important for teams. It does little good for the team if someone learns something important for a project but does not convey that to others and make that knowledge available for all. Building in time during the induction phase to brainstorm, create lists of knowns and unknowns and discuss any training needs is vital.
Next, during orientation, teams should discuss and come to consensus on standards for communication. These should include:
- availability during the work day
- how quickly communications should be acknowledged and/or responded to
- how/where and when to alert others of availability or non-availability
- flexibility in the work hours/day
- how/where/when to update knowledge base/project management
- notifications and alerts: when to tag someone or not
- setting up technology tool notifications/availability settings
- use of tone/basic communications standards (greetings/salutations, curtness, etc.)
Our systematic review found that teams who do these things facilitate knowledge sharing, trust building and connectivity, and help mitigate conflicts that can arise when these areas are vague or ambiguous.
Training
Naturally, you will want to ensure that your team is all on the same page in terms of how to use any technology tools, both synchronous and asynchronous. You will want to ensure that team members are familiar and comfortable with the mechanics of using, accessing, and updating various systems. But you will also want to spend some time orienting them to why and when to use each tool, as well as specific standards related to the knowledge shared. For example, if your team uses instant messaging to share quick links to relevant facts or articles, but also maintains a spreadsheet or document that organizes resources by category, you’ll want to explicitly describe how, when and why team members should share and update each other. Focus on standards such as:
- file and folder naming conventions
- location for specific types of knowledge to be documented/shared
- meta data that should be included (or not)
- frequency of updates
- expectations related to thoroughness (i.e. is it ok to share just a link or should it also contain a couple sentences of description?)
Summarized Tips
- Conduct induction/orientation face-to-face collocated if possible. If not, utilize synchronous technology such as videoconferencing to help the team best get to konw each other.
- Identify knowledge gaps, sharing processes and emphasize the importance of knowledge awareness and transfer during the orientation phase.
- Gain consensus across the team regarding teammate availability, responsiveness, timeliness, tool usage and communication protocol.
- Provide training on both technology tools and practices/processes/policies behind their usage to ensure team members know not only the how, but also the why, when, and how much.
So now you have established your team goals, deliverables, project parameters and selected tools and technologies accordingly (post 1). Human Resources (HR) has hired and formed a team based on competencies and fit for the project (post 2). And you have oriented the team to each other to form social bonds, get familiar with the technology and standards for the team and get connected, which leads to an obligatory somewhat related music video (and wow, look at all that Stereo MCs’ early 90’s denim!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7KyKb-Im90
In our next visit, Human Resources will close the loop by helping ensure that your virtual team has proper incentives and appraisal to help ensure that your team is meeting your goals and sharing knowledge in ways that foster success.