Advances in communication technology have always created new opportunities for teamworking and in recent years these opportunities have mushroomed (remote teams etc).
But what problems can arise with this? What can go astray with teamworking that is heavily reliant on communication technology, and what can you do to avoid this?
Thanks
Ben Hawes
One Response
Start With The People, Technology & The Company…
Ben,
Having worked remotely for 9 months a few years ago, I know only too well the issues with working remotely. I’ll be brief, but I found they can be categorized into three areas:
1. The People
When things are going well, it is normally quite easy to work remotely. However, when they go wrong people tend to feel the isolation of working alone – there suddenly becomes more distractions, small setbacks become big issues and motivation drops.
Also when you are talking about teams of remote workers, you have to look at how to build team spirit – if they are remote, aren’t you working with a group of individuals?
Likewise, the manager of this team will have a culture change as well, trust and leadership has to play a bigger role than normal workplace scenarios.
Finally, if your industry relies on knowledge sharing and peer-to-peer learning, remote workers can find their personal development drops in comparison to work-based peers.
2. The Technology
Technology isn’t foolproof, even if the salesman says otherwise! What is the impact of losing access to the file, web or email servers? How can you guarantee the performance of technology?
3. The Company
The company culture will need to evolve to accommodate remote working. For example, what impact do breakfast meetings have on remote workers? How much flexibility is lost by having remote workers in a team? If you work in a project based environment, how do remote workers know about the changes made by the PM five, ten minutes ago?
How much does your organisations policies and procedures need to alter to accommodate this? And what affect does this have on Quality Control and IiP?
Ben, these are just immediate answers, if you want to know more please feel free to email me.