Effective Virtual Teams

Abstract

It is likely that employees will work on a virtual team at some point in their careers. However, it is questionable how effectively organizations, training, and technology support the needs of virtual teams. Organizations must communicate what collaborative and knowledge-sharing behaviors are expected, establish reward and recognition systems that reinforce those behaviors, ensure that employees have the skills and tools required to fulfill those expectations, and develop managers that role model and reinforce the desired behaviors. Collaborative technologies must also become more self-managing, provide more compelling asynchronous capabilities, and consider that individuals may be part of many teams, thereby requiring better data aggregation and visualization.