OVERVIEW
In order to attract highly skillful individuals that are well-qualified for the duties and jobs that are available within the organization, the geological areas of our recruitment needs to be expanded. In order to accomplish this task, I highly recommend the addition of virtual teams to our organization. Virtual teams are groups of two or more geographically and/or organizationally dispersed people who are coordinated primarily through a combination of telecommunications and communication technologies to accomplish a common and valued goal (Townsend, DeMarie, & Hendrickson, 1998). Virtual teams rely on communication technology such as phone conferencing, emails, FAX, and video virtual conferencing in order to collaborate with one another.
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By hiring locally, we are restricting the available talent pool that can be beneficial to the business. The business savings on cost from virtual teams can be utilized to pay more to our team members. With the combination of being able to hire from anywhere, and with the potential for more pay will greatly increase the level of talent that we can attract to our organization.
• Increase productivity. A recent Stanford study showed a 13% productivity increase when employees worked remotely. Team members working from home can increase their productivity significantly by eliminating office distractions, travel and allowing some flexibility in working hours.
• Lower business cost. The cost of opening and maintaining an office can be costly and by having virtual teams we can access cities and even countries with the same level of talent but with lower living costs for those individuals. The cost of a lease, the utilities, and the equipment alone can add up to a very significant ongoing cost.
• Employee retention. When given the opportunity to work from home, employees are going to be more loyal and could stay with the organization
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By providing the training of a greater role clarity of effective communication strategies, I am positive that the benefits of having a virtual team will outweigh the disadvantages mentioned. Every team member would be set up with a company email, rather than a generic Yahoo or Gmail account, so that the communication can stay strictly business with no interference of outside sources. This feature is very low on cost but highly secured for the organization. All emails would be subject to monitoring. In order to maintain a respectable virtual working environment for everyone, all individuals will have to go through a mandatory 2-day diversity seminar course in a centralized location. This gives everyone the opportunity to “meet and greet” with their virtual colleagues during the 2-day seminar. Once a quarter everyone will come together to the main office to discuss progress, plans, issues and other factors that consist of the team’s projects. This allows the team members to stay socialized with their colleagues face-to-face and to tour the main offices. As a leader and future manager of virtual teams I will make the goals clearer, performance standards higher, and communication rules standard. People have varying assumptions on what to expect from each other and in order to avoid build-ups of misunderstandings, it is critical to replace those assumptions with clear rules and protocols that
A Capital One Financial Corporation has established such workplace by providing mobility and flexibility to their employees in business units. They implemented a concept “virtual workplace” which is based on reconfiguring office space and use of up to date mobile technology. It gives employees opportunity to be more productive since they are able to work from any place they would choose. According to the Benefits Survey Report from the Society for Human Resource Management published i...
In the previous study, the authors stated that there are various studies about the telecommuting include references to corporate attitudes toward telecommuting, motivation, productivity, supervision and employee satisfaction.
A virtual team refers to a collection of collaborating persons in geographically dispersed means. This group of persons do work across space, time and organizational boundaries and are connected together via information and telecommunication technologies in order to accomplish one or more organizational goals. The virtual teams do require new array of ways to work across boundaries through processes, systems, technology and people. This does require effective leadership in order to be a success.
That is a common question, which more and more companies are finding out is the future of business. For most people, a chance to work at home would be ideal. Paper work and long term considerations for companies may actually be planned better at home as opposed to a busy work office or cubicle. Professionals such as accountants, consultants, marketing professionals and other information-age workers can benefit from telecommuting (people who work at home). This is not to say that all work will be completed at home.
The methods of communicating for a virtual team consist of different tools than used by a traditional team because “…awareness of others’ activities is more difficult and requires some degree of technological intervention” (Fussell et.al., 1998, p. 276). A virtual team needs to use alternative tools because it has members working from different geographical areas and possibly at different times. A traditional team meets face to face, whereas a virtual team needs the use of technology to operate and interact efficiently. Teleconferencing, video conferencing, faxing, e-mail, and instant messaging are some of the tools available to a virtual team.
The same can be said about the disadvantages of telecommuting. Advantages of Telecommuting One of the main driving factors for any company is economics and how will telecommuting allow the corporation to be profitable. The primary saving for companies embarking upon the telecommuting concept is the reduction in the amount of office space required to conduct business. Telecommuting benefits the employer because they have an expanded pool of employees. The skills of employees with commuting difficulties, childcare conflict, disabilities, geographical barriers are made available to a telecommuting employer.
The workplace today goes beyond just the walls and ceilings that surround an office environment or office building. According to the International Telework Association and Council, 44.4 million Americans worked from home at least part of the time in 2004, up 7.5% from just on year earlier (Earthweb, 2005). Though it may be very convenient to work from home, the choice can bring its own set of problems. There are financial reasons, efficiencies, and even managing time are just a few to name that bring about many challenges and issues that any remote employee would face in that type of work environment.
Virtual corporations have some major characteristics (Judith, 2002, quoted in Byrne. n.d.) as following state: technology, excellence, opportunism, trust and no borders. Technology makes distance no longer a problem while entrepreneurs or companies far away from, due to the computer networks link people all over the world. Excellence was showed by each partner bringing its core competencies to the corporation, which can exert all advantages. Companies make alliances for specific market opportunity and this is a more efficiency work way than any others. Members in a virtual organization must trust their partners due to they meet the need by cooperating. The new communication ways were brought by computer networks, which blur the traditional hierarchies and boundaries.
In today’s virtual society our office experience is getting more and more dependent on cyber culture. Due to the increase in employees working at home, virtual offices have become a convenient way for staff, clients, educators, students and all other types of business people to stay connected. Teleconferencing, skyping, e-mails, and texting have become mainstream ways of conducting business so it seems pertinent that businesses learn to effectively create and conduct virtual teams.
What is telecommuting, and why would anyone want to either be employed by or employ others to work from their home? The telecommuting employees are “Salaried employees of an organization replace or modify the commute by working at home or a location closer to home than the regular workplace, generally using ICT to support productivity and communication with the supervisor, co-workers, clients, and other colleagues.” (Hoang, Nickerson, Beckman, & Eng, 2008) and according to studies 47 percent of telecommuting workers report that they are more productive while working from home due to a lessening of stress and increased satisfaction in their career - while their employers glean the benefit of saving 63 percent of the cost of absenteeism and save thousands of dollars annually over traditionally employed workers. (Potter, 2003) While some may say that in order to function properly in a workplace you have to be in the workplace, with minor adjustments in technology on both the employer’s and employee’s part telecommuting has become a proven, viable way for businesses to function profitably while their workforce remains able to reduce the stress of commuting on their personal and family lives.
Virtual teams – virtual team is one of the most popular teams in every organization because in virtual team the member are separated in different nation and use technologies to communicate to accomplish their goal on the time.
...ease employee engagement in jobs the redesigning of jobs and careful attention towards Job analysis. Telework could play a vital role in this manner.
There are four different types of teams. These teams are problem-solving teams, self-managed work teams, cross-functional teams, and virtual teams. Problem-solving teams work together to help find methods to improve the work environment or have suggestions to increase employee’s morale. Self-managed work teams organize the responsibilities of the employee’s such as assigning tasks to individuals, scheduling conflicts, and evaluate employee performances. Cross-functional teams are individuals whom all have experience in the same work field. The individuals come together as a team to incorporate their thoughts, designs, and new ideas to accomplish what the company needs to improve or create. Virtual teams are individuals that work together, but only by technology such as the internet, emails, or web cam.
Remote Access | As more of the knowledge based workforce become more mobile, the ability to be able to access cooperate data while not in the office is essential to employee productivity. This not only increases mobile employees’ productivity, but also has a significant impact on other employees and their productivity since information can be updated in the central corporate database providing near real-time information.
With the rise of mobile working whereby companies employ from different regions without necessarily having employees enclosed in one building, they end up employing more skilled and qualified workers regardless of their location. This has been made possible by companies embracing virtual meetings and video conferencing where managers and