How You Can Maintain High Engagement In Virtual Teams
4 simple yet effective strategies that can help virtual teams thrive.
Over the past year, working patterns and routines have changed drastically. Many business meetings are still held online via video conferencing apps despite epidemiological data are improving. During online meetings, team members can easily arrange calls from the comfort of their houses, without wasting precious time and energy in commuting.
Nevertheless, with the normalisation of remote working and virtual meetings, group members are facing many new challenges. Low levels of motivation may result from inconsistent communication and a lack of clarity regarding the tasks to be completed.
What are four strategies virtual teams can employ to maintain high engagement and be effective?
Set a schedule
Michael D. Watkins suggests it is essential to build a team with rhythm.
Ideally, virtual teams would need to meet on the same day and time every week. In doing so, the group would recreate a work routine, where communication is consistent.
The team leader should ask all team members when they are available to plan the working sessions correctly and avoid any disagreement. If all members participate actively in the decision, they would feel valued. Recognition is equally important in virtual teams: it can motivate team members to participate in online meetings with dedication and enthusiasm.
Clarify the tasks
Once the schedule is prepared, Watkins believes it is important to simplify each tasks. The team leader should explain the process, detailing which steps members need to follow to complete a task.
Plus, it would be good to divide the team into smaller groups, so that team members may find it easier to coordinate work. Updates regarding the state of the projects should be frequent, to ensure communication is constant. Clear direction during this time of crisis may help employees to stay focused and engaged.
The team leader should then give positive feedback to those who are performing well. Simple affirmations such as “You’ve done a great job! Congratulations” would suffice to create genuine bonds between the leader and the team members.
The act of praising in virtual meetings could strengthen social bonds further and increase motivation.
Be present in virtual teams
Sometimes, virtual teams may feel unnatural.
Rachel Cossar was a professional gymnastics, representing Canada internationally. In 2017 she founded a business with the intent to help people master both verbal and nonverbal communication. She also offers some tips on how to be present in virtual teams.
For instance, she recommends you should sit about 3 feet away from your laptop, so that the team can both see your face and part of your body. She also suggests to perform some stretching exercises before an online meeting; this is helpful to get some energy and prepare mentally. These tips can be very useful to make virtual teams more authentic and interesting, which could increase engagement.
Interactive meetings
Team members should then leverage the latest technology.
Virtual meetings could become more interactive if members are able to share their opinions comfortably. For instance, popular platform Zoom offers “polling and Q&A” and “virtual hand-raising”.
These features incentivise employees to participate actively. They would be more prone to share their own ideas, given they would just need to click on the specific icon to let the other members know they wish to speak up. By using technology wisely, group members could be more engaged — resulting in higher quality work.
Final thoughts
It is clear virtual teams can be very challenging.
Communication may be poor and team members may feel disconnected, leading to disengagement which could impair productivity. Although solutions to the ongoing health crisis are now present, many workers are likely to continue working remotely in the future. If the right techniques are not put in place, this working style can further decreases motivation as a study conducted between 2010 and 2015 shows.
In the presence of challenges, the four strategies the article explored — setting a schedule, clarifying tasks, learning how to be present in a virtual space and leveraging the best technology — can all be useful to maintain high engagement and motivation in virtual teams.
