Forming Virtual Teams

1) What are the challenges in forming virtual teams?

According to Psychology today a virtual team is defined as "a group of people working together across time and space, using electronic communication technology." https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/smartwork/201104/8-tips-effective-virtual-teams. As we advance in the field of communications and information technology, organizations expand their presence all over the world. Virtual teams curtail the cost of travel as well as the risks of travel. There are many employee travel restrictions after the attack and, so virtual teams have aggressively increasing in number. Virtual teams collaborate with one another to accomplish their goals and tasks. In this process, they come across many challenges.

Establishing trust among team members: One of the biggest challenge virtual teams face is Trust. Team members do not have face-to-face interactions and it really challenges building trust among team members who rarely see each other. The trust is sometimes built among team members when they interact face to face over social bonds, a cup of coffee and sometimes discussing personal issues also.

The team members interact through social media, video conferencing where they cannot read the person and their emotional feelings. Due to the time zone differences there is time lag between messages being sent and received. This impacts the overall efficiency and immediacy of work. Team leads, Managers, and upper management should try to bring about changes to the processes where virtual teams must adapt to the situation. Team members lose information they are accustomed to relying upon. The core team implements the major decisions and then the virtual teams is informed. There is always a communication gap and loss of information