ABOUT USBackground to Collaboration and the Virtual Workplace
The backbone of any business is its staff, the employees. Ask any business manager or owner and they will tell you one of the hardest tasks in their business is obtaining and retaining qualified and trained employees.
Ask the same business owners and they will tell you one of their biggest business expenses is the costs involved with acquiring, training and maintaining employees. Advertising for employees, interviewing, hiring and training are also very time consuming.
As awareness of the virtual workplace increases, most professionals seek jobs closer to home because of the cost and time involved with commuting.
Businesses needing to remain competitive are looking for ways to trim business costs at the same time qualified employees are looking for increased salaries to offset the rising costs of commuting.
An employee with the highest level of skills often leaves to start their own business because of the stress and cost of commuting and worries about their company downsizing.
Companies downsize to save costs.
Is there a way to address the company's needs and the employee's needs at the same time optimizing work production and cutting costs?
Yes!
The consultants at Scatterwork® have the experience and the expertise to work with a company's infrastructure to create and support virtual teamwork. They can provide the guidance, design the business processes, select the IT tools and lead the training to ensure success.
From the employees' point of view, being part of a virtual team and working off-site affords them more time with their family. It also eliminates or minimizes the costs, stress and time involved with commuting, reduces wardrobe and lunch costs, thereby effectively giving them more spendable income from their paycheck. In effect, this provides a raise in income.
How does the business benefit? By implementing protocols to support virtual teams, the business reduces costs, increases productivity, and can acquire and retain employees with the greatest assets to the business. For new hires, the applicant with the greatest assets for the company can be considered without concern for geography.
For a FREE consultation with a Scatterwork® expert, just sign up up using the form on the left and follow the instructions.
Pitfalls
Some of the problems that stem from virtual work don't really come from outsourcing, but have to do with other factors:
- Lack of trust, either between the management and team or among team members who do not know each other face to face.
- Not having the task/project well thought out and articulated.
- Not identifying specific performance metrics.
- Not being clear with the chosen virtual team about what the task/project is.
- Not being clear about the time allotted for project.
- Not determining the funding source for an adequate budget.
- Not assigning an in-house person to be responsible for communicating with the virtual team.
- Not setting milestones to review project/task along the way.
- Changing direction of the task/project mid-stream.
- Not doing due diligence in the selection of the virtual team.
- Lack of communication with the virtual team.
- Not utilizing the right IT tools so the team is connected.
- Not bringing the in house team and the virtual team together through communication and mutual teamwork.
- Not communicating to in-house employees that virtual team work is not to take away in- house jobs but to strengthen the company as a whole, including their jobs and the company's ability to pay their salaries.
- Management resistance to not having their team under one roof.
We can list probably a hundred more obstacles. The thing to realize is that the obstacles can be overcome and companies both large and small are working to make that happen.