"HOW TO CREATE AND EFFECTIVELY MANAGE A VIRTUAL TEAM"

"How to create and effectively manage a virtual team"

"How to create and effectively manage a virtual team"

Virtual teams "are composed of employees, with unique skills, located at a distance from each other, who must collaborate to accomplish important organizational tasks" (Kirkman, Rosen, Gibson, Tesluk & McPherson, 2002, p. 67). Tasks are co-ordinated across time zones, physical, cultural and organisational boundaries. These boundaries are the basis of the definition of a virtual team, and are also the basis for the unique challenges of managing a virtual team.

Another researcher defines virtual teams as a “group of geographically and/or organizationally dispersed coworkers that are assembled using a combination of telecommunications and informal technologies to accomplish an organizational task” (Townsend, 1998, p.). In short, basic characteristics of a virtual team are distance between members and reliance on technology to communicate.

The structure of virtual teams varies across organizations and industries. Along with their common themes of reliance on technology, distance barriers, and uniform task assignments, they typically are divided into project teams, service teams or process teams. This helps the organization to better define its needs and provide support of collaboration between the participants (Edwards & Wilson, 2004). The structure helps to permit the coordination of specialized talents of employees not in the same location to have a continuous cycle of workflow and feedback throughout the sharing of information (Hawkrigg, 2007).

An obvious yet important issue virtual teams are forced to deal with is time zone barriers. Due to the ever so changing business world and the basic reason for having virtual teams, members of the team often are in totally different geographical locations. “Many international companies have projects spanning a variety of nationalities, involving great geographical distance and a range of time zones” (Oertig & Buergi 2006, p.). Time zone barriers impact the amount of time available and required to fulfill various business operations. It can also be stressful on individuals when one member needs an answer promptly and the other is asleep because there is a substantial time difference. Members of virtual teams do not enjoy the luxury of being able to put tasks off to the last minute. Members must allow an ample amount of lead time when exchanging information as a means of prevention from not making deadlines. This can put unwanted stress on individuals simply because they might have to extend their work day, ...