The prospect of starting your own virtual team might be daunting. Covid-19, though is forcing companies worldwide to adapt to the new normal and start creating solutions which involve the management of virtual teams and the use of remote staffing. Teamwork is important in a remote setting. Therefore your virtual employees need to be managed in a way that is as good as face to face management.

But if you went about hiring and managing remote employees the right way, then there don’t need to be any issues about the way your operations are going to be handled. Communication and interaction help as useful benchmarks in implementing virtual teams as well.

If you haven’t come up with a way of holding your office workers accountable before Covid-19, there is a chance you’re going to need to implement new workflows and house rules in order to foster an environment of collaboration and effectiveness. 67asg7a65d65g

But first there are different kinds of virtual teams, let’s examine them and see what kinds of arrangements work best for you.

Networked teams

This usually consists of drawing staff from different departments in order to perform a specific function. As an example, you may cull people who are from IT and those from marketing when it comes time to start going live with a certain product. You can make real time updates to software development if IT and marketing are on the same team.

If you’re working remotely, you might have them interact through Slack or Skype and use a platform like Asana to monitor their progress.

It’s not unusual for different departments to collaborate. What matters is you come up with the set of rubrics for your team to collaborate and they will be working hand in hand to facilitate the solutions which are likely to make your product launches successful.

Parallel teams

These usually consist of members of the same organization formulating a team to jumpstart a process or meet a deadline. Often, the team can be disbanded or reshuffled as soon as a certain aspect of the pipeline is completed. The entire department is a team in itself and this can be divided into sub teams so that each members can complete their tasks accordingly.

Satellite teams

These groups are formed if a company has more than one office across multiple locations. For example if you have an office in the States and you have a team in Australia, you can interface with the Australia team together with US if you connect them together.

If they work in parallel shifts, that is great, but they can still keep in touch even if they don’t necessarily work on the same schedule. You can do this through periodical Face to Face calls or use job boards such as Trello or Asana. Work teams don’t have to fit a particular pattern, but for sure you need to be sure that you are taking a multicultural approach so everyone feels included in communication and interaction.

Customer service teams

These are often work methods which are done on a continuous basis. For example if people from Canada are attending to an ecommerce store in the States, they can hand over their very same functionalities and tasks to people in the Philippines. For companies that require these, it ensures a round the clock workflow thus enabling operations to remain functional 24/7. Technology and collaboration has long been forming a part of customer service teams.

Management teams

These consist of managerial staff of different organizations put together in a certain group, being able to monitor different employees across different locations.

At iSuporta, we have our management teams, able to tap into each other and raise questions and concerns while we are complying with Work from Home methods of the New Normal. Sometimes each manager or supervisor has their own team and those from higher management are able to oversee members from each team.

So whether your staff are collocated, parallel, traditional and virtual, it actually doesn’t matter what kind of label you give it. What matters is the effectiveness of your team because even though you are handling remote employees, you want your projects to be done with excellence and finesse and you should not compromise on any of your organizational goals.

Most of the world are virtual, but this should not stop you from innovating new methods to conform to quarantines while at the same time being able to meet your bottom line and service your customers.

Here are some suggestions to improve on how you can manage your virtual teams.

1. Compartmentalization

It’s vital that you know who goes where and who does what. If you use a job board like Trello or a platform like Slack, it’s easy to segregate the various departments and you don’t have to worry about anyone getting lost in translation because you can easily toggle between tasks and make sure that communication is ongoing in spite of a dispersed team. You can support your employees properly through the use of compartmentalization.

2. Accountability and KPI’s

Use Time Doctor or use Asana to keep track of your employees work output. It’s necessary that you give them a set of KPI’s to comply with and in turn, your supervisors are well aware of these standards. Being able to meet your goals means you keep check of their workflow and provide them properly defined tasks and certain timelines in which to complete them.

3. Hire the right staff

Hiring the right virtual teams is important. If you’re considering outsourcing some of your operations, then you need to find the right outsourcing partner. It’s necessary to find a company who allows you to customize your operations the way you would like to. If you’re having trouble making your team go remote, then remote staffing doesn’t need to be a hassle if you can appoint remote employees who are just as good as your in-house staff.

Do you have any questions about working with virtual teams? Contact us, and let us know what you think.