Communication Strategies for Virtual Teams in the Modern Workplace

1. Introduction

In the contemporary business environment, projects are being carried out by teams with members from various locations in the world which makes it difficult for face-to-face interaction. The increase in globalization has witnessed a rise in virtual teams to break through cultural, geographical, and time constraints. According to Bergiel, Bergiel, and Balsmeier (2008), a virtual team can be described as a group of individuals who work across time, space, and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology. Though virtual teams avoid substantial costs such as traveling and relocation expenses, they are faced with other costs such as breakdowns in communication and trust that prevent the team from performing well (Cynarska, 2012). Specifically in the United States, businesses and agencies are facing numerous communication and collaboration challenges in deploying virtual teams (Hein & Harakiewicz, 2008). This holds true also for the public sector with federal virtual teams. O’Neil, Lewis, and Kerste (2012) highlighted from the investigation by government leaders that virtual teams are increasingly recognized for their potential to provide high-quality results and innovative solutions. In spite of these possible benefits, many leaders report that the same technology that enables virtual teams is also the source of their greatest challenges. Listening to the concerns of these leaders, the research proposed here aims to investigate and develop strategies to enhance communication in virtual teams in a U.S. public agency for greater effectiveness and productivity.

2. Importance of Effective Communication in Virtual Teams

Further to this, communication is the way in which we express our emotions. In a global marketplace, virtual teams include people from different cultures with different first languages. Misunderstandings due to language or tone of voice are common. It is through efficient and sometimes over expressive communication that we can ensure that what we mean to say is what is understood. And actually, the empathy or understanding of another’s situation, given global separation, is more easily done verbally. This colors the social interaction within a team and the relationships built. Any good team manager knows the value of team morale to performance, and effective communication is pivotal to maintaining high morale within a virtual team.

Effective communication is key to the success of virtual teams in any organization. Virtual teams encounter various challenges to communication due to its nature, and these challenges make it essential for virtual teams to work on establishing strong communication strategies. Effective communication is linked to higher performance through the quality of the work done and the relationships built as a result of that. It is through communication that objectives are set, procedures are implemented, and results are accomplished; and all of this is crucial to team performance.

3. Challenges of Communication in Virtual Teams

The lack of non-verbal communication in virtual teams is a great hindrance to effective communication. According to Mehrabian’s rule, 55% of communication is body language, 38% is the tone of the voice, and 7% the actual words spoken. While virtual teams can communicate using videoconferencing or VoIP technologies, a great deal of communication is written in the form of emails, instant messages, and posts in discussion forums which completely lacks the non-verbal components. Written communication also allows for greater chance to organize and plan exactly what to say and how to say it, which can cause misunderstandings if messages are misconstrued in a different tone than intended. Email can also cause information to be more formal and less personal due to the documented nature of email and the capacity to “broadcast” the message to many people beyond the intended recipients. (Griffith & Neale, 2009)

Communication in virtual teams does not occur as often as with co-located teams because of the asynchronous nature that communication takes. Due to time zones, work schedules, or other priorities, virtual team members can become accustomed to communicating on their own time. Communication may take longer than it would with face-to-face conversations which can slow down completion times for certain tasks. The shift from immediate response conversations to delayed response conversations can also cause less social presence and less awareness of other team members’ intentions which can lead to misconceptions and misunderstandings.

The technologies that are hailed for bringing virtual teams together are often the same that cause communication to be unclear and incomplete. While virtual teams cultivate innovation by bringing together individual talent, they present great challenges to effective communication. The physical separation of team members creates distance that can lead to a psychological perception of further distance. This psychological sense of distance can cause communication to be less frequent and less in depth because of an increased cognitive load of understanding and absorbing information.

4. Strategies for Enhancing Communication in Virtual Teams

Firstly, it is crucial that management foster an environment that allows open and honest communication between team members. Research on virtual teams has consistently pointed to trust as a key factor in the success of a team. One study defined trust as “a willingness to be vulnerable based on positive expectations about another’s intentions or behavior”. It is not difficult to see why trust would be so important for a virtual team, whose members are relying on technology rather than face-to-face contact. Without trust among team members, misunderstandings are more likely to occur and when they do, are more likely to escalate into a serious conflict. An open and honest environment can also lead to the sharing of ideas and creative solutions to problems.

Communication is a very complex process. In the context of a virtual team environment, effective communication takes on added importance. Prior research has provided evidence that a team with weak communication tends to be less satisfied, less confident, and has a higher incidence of conflict. For the virtual team, communication is the lifeblood. There are a number of strategies that can be utilized by management in order to improve communication between team members.

5. Conclusion

This article addresses how to improve the effectiveness of communication between team members as well as with the customer. On top of this, it examines ways in which information moves between consumer and producer, which is an often neglected aspect of communication strategy. As a detailed examination of real-time communications within a global virtual team, this study illuminates the ways in which a framework of shared meaning and understanding can vastly improve the effectiveness of a team’s communication. This work serves to highlight the importance of shared understanding as well as expose some of the common pitfalls in communication between global teams. Lastly, this study attempts to identify the best method of information transfer to and from the customer in a global economy.

Effective communication may be instrumental in the success of any organization. Now more than ever, in the time of economic uncertainty across the world and increased competitiveness in most industries, companies have to stay connected and engaged with their customers. The goal of any communication strategy will be to create an environment in which information can easily flow back and forth between the members of the company and their customers. In order to see if this is taking place, a company needs to do research on the effectiveness of their communication: What is getting in the way of effectively transferring and receiving information? Are there any better ways in which a given set of information can be exchanged? In the end, the goal needs to be the facilitation of collective learning. The company itself and its employees must constantly be learning new information on products and customers. This information needs to be shared and recycled into the organization’s learning environment.