5 tips for designing human-centered virtual teams
Are you frustrated in your new virtual work setup? Are you or your teams feeling socially disconnected? Exhausted? Overwhelmed? Confused? Disengaged? The transition to remote work during the COVID-19 crisis has disrupted our social lives both at home and at the office.
While some of us have adapted better than others — whether it’s because your company made the leap to digital long ago or you have recently established virtual work flows that seem to be working — many of us are still struggling and trying to find a rhythm that works for us.
In the first talk for Impact Shakers, I hosted a virtual presentation on designing human-centered experiences for remote work and how to improve empathy, communication, and collaboration in the process.
TLDR: Effective virtual teams are intentional. They involve understanding 1) human needs and repeatedly exploring and testing 2) tools and 3) processes.
The sweet spot is the intersection of positive human emotions, effective processes, and strong tool functionality that combine to create truly innovative experiences. The starting point for a leader seeking to design centered virtual teams is always empathy.
Based on lessons learned from my own experiences designing effective virtual teams with my international NGO clients, here are five tips to help you do the same:
1. Understand your people.
When seeking any kind of innovation, we should always start at understanding people’s needs, or pain points. Only after an exercise in empathy — extended active listening, observing, questioning, feeling and understanding — should we determine the appropriate tools or processes to meet the needs of our teams.
On one of my client teams, I observed that there was a degree of social disconnection and isolation specifically between the locally based staff (South Sudan) and internationally based staff when we first transitioned to remote work. We have now instituted a video-enabled calling default from our previous habit of audio-only calling which helps us communicate more effectively through facial expressions and body language.
2. Test and adapt different tools and processes.
The human-centered design approach requires continuous testing of assumptions and solutions, also known as prototyping and iteration. When it comes to virtual team experiences, there is a wide variety of technological solutions and management or collaborative processes available to us. But not all tools (e.g. technologies, platforms or resources) or processes are created equal and some may be very ill-suited for your team. Depending on the needs of your team, you should consider a combination and explore the pros and cons of each.
For example, if your team needs a free group video conferencing platform without time limits, Google Meet is a great option for up to 250 participants. Zoom is probably the best in the field in terms of functionality, but the free version is limited to 40 minute meetings. Additionally, Zoom has had a history of issues with privacy and data protection. Jitsi is a fantastic free, open source, and ethical alternative to either Zoom or Google Meet.
3. Invest in digital infrastructure and literacy.
The digital divide is real. The critical aspect of the digital divide is access and quality of digital tools and infrastructure. There are those who have access to wifi, reliable connection or higher bandwidth and those who simply don’t. Organizations must invest in the infrastructure that teams need to effectively communicate and collaborate while working remotely. This is the starting point.
Even if these investments are made, there is still the challenge of digital literacy, which will result in inequity: some people need more support than others to learn the various tools and how to use them. Leaders have an obligation to help them learn so they can participate. Invest in digital training and streamline these opportunities in your work.
4. Establish and follow a communications protocol.
I’m sure many of you have experienced the confusion and chaos of numerous communication channels and tools. In the absence of a standardized protocol, you might get an email, a phone call, a WhatsApp direct message, or a Slack channel mention on a particular topic. You might even receive all of the above. The experience of never knowing what you are going to get and where you are going to get it, and not knowing the proper way to respond is stressful.
With this pain in mind, I recommend creating a communications protocol. The protocol should outline what communications channels should be used and when. Your organization or team might devise a protocol in the format of a decision tree with branches to help you decide what is appropriate and when, or you might use a different text or graphic representation. The essential is that it is communicated clearly with repeated encouragement.
As an example, on one of my client teams, Microsoft Teams is the default platform for all communications. All other other platforms are secondary. Email and Skype are only used when Teams is not possible or appropriate for clear reasons, such as bandwidth or low digital literacy of external participants.
5. Anticipate future needs, be prepared, and facilitate actively.
As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, change is the only constant in life. The same is true for virtual teams. Your team members’ needs will change from moment to moment, day to day and month to month. New tools and approaches will be developed. Certain tools and processes will gain or lose their initial value as emotions, processes, and functionality change. Virtual work is the new normal and teams must adjust to this reality. The key is building resilience and adaptability in these times of uncertainty.
How can we do this? Ensure work flows that regularly assess needs, equity and inclusion. Plan for contingencies and things going wrong. Build in space for your employees and colleagues to share their feelings. Rely on strong facilitation skills and methods for accounting for the downsides or limitations of technological platforms. For example, take turns to allow everyone to speak and ensure varying degrees of interactivity or two way communication flows through dynamic platforms like Mentimeter, an interactive slide and survey platform, or using the chat features of video conferencing platforms.
Note: This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
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Mahrukh ‘Maya’ Hasan is a social designer, researcher and strategist who is fascinated by the way communication, media and technology influences human behavior. She’s the director and founder of Azura Labs, a research and design studio, and consults to international NGOs and UN agencies serving communities mainly in Africa and Asia. Maya is also on the leadership team of Fifty Shades of Aid, a global support network of 25,000 humanitarian aid workers.
