A good virtual and hybrid teams are by-products of the workplace pandemic. In recent months, most companies have been caught off-guard, turning off office lights and mostly sitting at kitchen tables and desks discussing work in countless virtual team meetings. Despite the struggle, doors of opportunity have been left open to businesses of all sizes, including employees. Let’s see how this affects both sides. GitHub reported that employers are 42% more productive and 38% more efficient. In addition, office politics and bureaucracy were also cut by 24%. While workers are comfortable working on their T-shirts and sandals, 82% visualize virtual teams as the future of the work.
Leaders who have seen the light of remote work are finding solutions to move their cohesive virtual teams in the right direction past the adjustment period. So how do you keep your business operations running smoothly in a virtual space that benefits your business and everyone connected to it? For this to work effectively, aside from maintaining the hierarchical relationship, here are some things to consider:
Engage with each team member
To make the team more effective, learn how to engage employees with each team member. Taking time to get to know your employees is key to understanding how they are connected to your business and its success. They need direction and encouragement to succeed. Empower the team to engage with the business by giving them authority in decision-making, trust to perform their tasks, and value after resolving the issue.
The key to solid workplace relationships is staying involved and avoiding micromanaging. Build workflows and systems that keep everyone working toward the same goals without worrying about a slowdown in productivity. If you’re just getting started with your virtual assistant and want to build a good working relationship, you can download our task monitoring template.
Create Constant Communication
Constant communication involves frequent and effective feedback that increases team productivity, efficiency, and harmony. Effective feedback is two-way. Team members are more likely to be actively engaged when they have the opportunity to provide feedback. Assessing your virtual team is similar to how it is in a traditional office setting. Regular meetings to provide honest feedback help teams learn from their mistakes and build their confidence through learning and improvement.
As mentioned in What To Expect In The First 60 Days With Your Virtual Assistant, open communication through having continuous feedback with different tools allows you to measure and improve your virtual assistant’s performance early on. To establish this, you may explore the benefits of using mobile phones, emails, Slack, Zoom, Skype, Trello, and such.
Manage Challenges And Grow As A Team
Activates your team’s potential to help them learn, grow, and progress. The challenges you encounter are small steps into a new world of opportunities. Leading the team means walking a fine line. A poorly managed team can be the biggest hindrance in achieving the goal. One of the challenges many business leaders face is giving the team the freedom to stay creative and dynamic while working with company boundaries. Keeping the team within the company guidelines fights complacency and negative workplace behavior.
In our recent article, What To Expect From Your Virtual Assistant In The First 90 Days, team members who have worked for more than two months are expected to be fully integrated and contribute to the team by this stage. By allowing team members to express themselves and be recognized, top management and their members can work together more effectively to overcome workplace challenges and find workable and efficient solutions.
Staying Connected Boosts Team Motivation
Build trust by continuously creating new opportunities for your team to grow. The foundation of traditional corporate culture is developed through interpersonal interaction and office practices. Teams that are hybrid or virtual are more likely to experience accountability problems due to remote setup. The lack of assurance has sometimes caused miscommunication and stalled tasks. According to Harvard Business Review research, businesses that have faith in their employees report 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 74% less stress, and 106% more vigor at work.
Despite the geographical separation between each member, online communication tools have developed to sustain the demand of the market. It has evolved into a tool for team social interaction as well outside of being a platform for business activities. Here are some ideas for online team-building activities.
- Virtual Bingo – it is played in the same way as the traditional version. There are many available online bingo apps that will generate cards, and distribute them to team members. This is ideal for live virtual sessions.
- Video Charades – The game proceeds like the regular charades, but this time everyone on the team will act out except for one person who is guessing. This game is ideal for live online meetings.
- Online Virtual Scavenger Hunt – The host will create a list of items to find in their respective places and set a time limit. After everyone scavenges around they will show all the items but remove those with duplicates. The game is won by having the unique items presented.
Despite the geo-restriction of working in one room, there is variety of tools that enable remote workers to connect for work or team activities in order to create a virtual culture that keeps the good virtual team together. Motivating and building trust among employees entails fostering camaraderie both on and off working hours. With more time spent together, team members and leaders will be able to communicate comfortably and act swiftly on business challenges and work as one.
