Build a Successful Virtual Team

A virtual team (aka a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, digital team or remote team) refers to a group of individual people and or entities that work together from different physical locations and rely on communication technology to collaborate.

Benefits of Having Virtual Teams

• lower overhead
• lower IT costs (Everyone provides their own equipment but must meet requirements regarding virus and other protection; There is no need to constantly refresh technology)
• meet clients on their terms (re in their homes, at convenient times, etc)
• More work-life balance because workers work at home. There is no commute, stiff and costly work clothes, etc
• More environmentally friendly (less gas used yearly, less gas on the road, etc)

How to Build a Successful / High-Functioning Virtual Team

• Write accurate job descriptions, hold strategically planned job interviews and select people who have the right characteristics for virtual team work. 
• Strive to provide a good internal customer experience. Previously, we discussed customer experience when referring to external customers. However, consider employees as your 'internal customers' for whom you create a positive internal customer experience. 
• Respect time zone 
• Consider learning styles of virtual team members. 
• Integrate all functional departments to allow virtual team work to occur smoothly, in the cloud CRM programs (like HubSpot) are very useful in this regard.
• Conduct team and one-on-one 'huddle' meetings at intervals. 
• For instance, 'daily huddles', ie quick meetings no more than 5-15 minutes can have a fixed set of objectives like 
• deliverables yesterday
• plans for today and 
• current needs / barriers
• Onboard new and existing employees to ensure all virtual (and other workers) have clear goals. Some must-have elements of the onboarding process include the following.
• Company's unique value proposition and the way in which the specific role contributes to it.
• Clarity and transparency via Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and performance expectations.
• Train virtual team members in the art of 'over communication' as it is critical for the success of virtual teams, especially regarding more complex issues and members. 
• For instance, explaining that your company has an onboarding process rather than assume new employees know what to you is 'the obvious' is necessary, especially since many online workers are notoriously averse to much personal contact. If not advised beforehand, these employees might resent the additional interaction required for the onboarding process or other type of work.
• For instance, adequate scheduling tools that send multiple reminders. Some even send to mobile phones as in the case of Calendry. This helps to cover all bases since other reminders may all arrive on someone's computer-based email.
• Giving examples that highlight their need, stress soft skills like consideration for different time zones, the need for clear and timely communication, etc.

• Have adequate infrastructure with the following capabilities.
• Round-the-clock real time operational information as per the following examples.
• Current project stages, deadlines and outstanding tasks, progress reports of deals, owners of tasks and so on. In the cloud CRM tools that allow deal tracking sales pipelines like HubSpot are ideal for achieving this. Managers could rest assured that they still have as much, if not more chance to monitor and control work (than in traditional teams).
• Each member's current availability status and (if unavailable) times when expected to be available. There should be an agreement regarding the time zone to be used.
• Automatic time zone converter that accounts for day light saving changes
• Training materials
• Communication for an experience that is as virtually in person as possible and desired. Options include the following. The ability to do video conferencing is very commendable as a means of improving the virtual team experience. 
• Google Hangout, Zoom, Skype, Whatsapp, ICQ and Slack
• Scheduling (across time zones)
• HubSpot CRM's meeting scheduler
• Calendly meeting scheduler
• Doodle meeting scheduler which is especially useful for numerous attendees (even using the free trial version)
• Google Calendar (ONLY the school version allows this)
• Document sharing and storage
• Google Docs
• Dropbox
• SharePoint. 
• HR systems
• Online training (Youtube videos, webpages), Online HR systems (UpWork), Direct payment (Paypal, UpWork)
• Security. Examples include the following.
• LastPass is a system that gives your (virtual team) workers access to your accounts without risk of them hijacking your account in any way (through vacation, illness, conclusion of a project, dismissal and so on). It works by allowing you to give them access to any account, Paypal, etc but via LastPass. You can then revoke that access after their role has finished, without them ever having the real password to the website (Paypal, etc).

• Valued reward system based on results (vs just movement that is sometimes unproductive).
• Request feedback on the experience of virtual team members. Use this exercise as a means to learn how you can ensure each virtual team member is as happy and productive as possible.

CONTENT RELATED TO MANAGING A SUCCESSFUL VIRTUAL TEAM

• The best starting point for formulating a plan to motivate virtual team members to be successful is strategic recruitment and selection. Even planning the job interview for virtual team members is critical.
• How to Assign Ownership of Contacts and Deals to HubSpot CRM users / virtual team members
• Social media manager