Building a Virtual Team

I am looking for ideas on how to better connect remote employees to HQ. We are a small company (50), but sales people and certain applications specialists are located around the US (and two overseas). Soon 30% of our workforce will be remote from HQ. How do we make them feel included?

The Team Doc Says…

Thank you for your question. Virtual teams present challenges over teams that are in the same location, but they are not insurmountable. The best way to figure out how to overcome an issue in a virtual team is to first look at how you would deal with it if the team were face-to-face. Then determine what technology or tactics you can use to apply that solution to your virtual team.

Let’s say you want to post a “Kudos Wall” as recognition for team members to motivate them and improve morale. You could post items about team members from the offsite locations in the home office and vice versa. You could also create a web page that would be your “Kudos Wall” for the entire team.

If communication is an issue, make sure that you have regularly scheduled meetings with the entire team. Encourage team members to interact in these meetings. You may even want to set aside part of the meeting as a quick “get to know you” format so team members can talk about what they are doing and how it fits in the big picture. Another great way to communicate is to set up a team blog. You can get your IT folks to set it up on your intranet or start one with an external vendor. Encourage each team member to participate in keeping the dialogue going on the blog.

I hope this gives you some ideas on where to start. For each specific virtual team issue, there is definitely a solution.

Best regards,

Denise O’Berry
aka ‘Team Doc’