Managing Virtual Organization

Virtual organizations wherein employees work from their home offices save cost and bring sustainable solutions by increasing accessibility to resources spread across different locations and multiple markets, dynamically configuring them to address the needs of individual projects. The value brought to employees includes saving time, cost, and energy required for daily commute between home and office resulting in better work life balance, as a result, they can pursue hobbies and other self-development activities. There could be many other advantages but at the same time, some of the perils could be:

• Units with decision-making authorities respond to local challenges independently growing in silos without utilizing the combined strength of the organization which can lead to duplication of resources and lower cost-effectiveness putting pressure on profits and delayed responses to clients.

• Knowledge management can become challenging. When an employee resigns, it is not only a loss of a well-trained resource but also a loss of knowledge acquired from the market and partners during interactions. The absence of well-defined knowledge-sharing practices can reduce the possibility of replicating solutions in multiple markets.

• New members bring with them different values and cultures and might take time to settle in the new environment which can result in a lack of synergy among different units.

• Working from the home office requires a high level of integration between professional and personal life, as a result, work-life balance can also go for a toss.

Some of the ways to overcome barriers posed by the virtual model could be as follows:

Developing Shared Understanding

• Facilitate more team retreats and create opportunities for employees to visit each other in their home location to promote bonding and understanding of the context in which they operate.

• Create opportunities and processes to share day-to-day activities throughout the project. This will help in tapping tacit knowledge and creating support for team members.

• Provide an interactive social media platform to promote organizational vision, mission, and strategy.

• Invest in team-building software to aid in creating transparency in roles and responsibilities.

• Keep employee turnover low by improving satisfaction since in a virtual environment orientation of the employees and creation of common understanding take time.

Knowledge Management

Virtual organizations and teams are sociotechnological systems where both social systems and technological systems play an important role in designing a knowledge management infrastructure.

Create Social System by creating social capital within the organization: Map the social network of the team, by identifying the extent of dependency on each team member for getting work done. This network can cater to more than one task and will depend upon factors such as team output location, task strategy, and process focus.

Technology: The configuration of the team helps in determining the type of technology needed. Hence one must deploy the right technology depending on the project requirement and organizational goals.

• A strong internal network requires work-sharing software, a shared workspace with the ability to work on the same document, an online whiteboard, synchronous and asynchronous meeting capabilities, etc. A loose network can be developed with e-mail facilities and a single member coordinating the flow.

• For connecting with targeted people in the external environment, issues of firewalls and compatibility with external systems must be ensured.

Trust and Communication

In a virtual organization, members rely on words and actions to decide whether to trust the other party or not. For bringing together different units to focus on the common organizational goals, sharing of resources, and knowledge management, Scheuch must build trust and sensitize employees toward effective communication:

Trust:

• Trust is not blind - encourage maintaining logs of commitments and actions taken, audit the same periodically.

• Trust needs boundaries - define measurable goals

• Trust demands confidence in competence - help employees to keep abreast with the latest best practices; encourage knowledge sharing; identify learning needs and facilitate training.

• Trust is tough - make it mandatory to stick to commitments and deliverables. Focus on results.

• Trust needs bonding - encourage team building activities, open feedback, and sharing of daily progress, Make team members familiar with each other’s competence and unique personal attributes.

• Trust needs touch - encourage personal network building.

• Trust requires leaders - support the team during adversities, align action with words, actively assist team members with their next assignment and career planning, build performance management systems that enable strategic alignment, decide whether to pay for skills or performance, and develop competencies that are specific to virtual atmosphere.

Communication:

• A physical workspace, where one stores the material and sits to work, and a psychological workspace where one finds a quiet block of time to think and execute work in hand, is a crucial aspects of virtual office operations.

• The blurring of the distinction between office and non-office time results in intrusions. This negatively affects both at personal and official front. Anything that disrupts the communication process and interferes with the creation of shared meaning is referred to as ‘noise’.

• Communication across cultures also requires instilling cultural awareness within the team. Though the team may have a common language such as English to converse in, the subtleties are as important to understand.

• Dynamic roles and self-organizing teams for flexibility and quick response to clients.

• Greater synergy among members for sharing best practices and knowledge

Reconciling contradictory demands

• Develop a sense of overall vision and values and re-orient employees towards them.

• Concentrate on building activities and expertise around different divisions more strategically in order to avoid duplication and faster responses to clients.

• Develop agreements on accountability of various divisions to clarify the deliverables and assessment of results.

• Ensure flow of resources and expertise in both directions for saving cost.

• Have a transparent reward-sharing policy.

• Providing the flexibility of operation to units based on their unique situation and deliverables.

Encourage bumblebees

Maintaining coordination and synergies requires facilitators, orchestrators, and coordinators who record the best practices of each unit and share the knowledge with other units. They would help in:

• Effectiveness of communication and intervention when members’ participation becomes sporadic, or misunderstanding arises.

• For sensitive issues use shuttle diplomacy in which one on one meeting is conducted with each member to integrate and provide feedback.

• Minimize less socially acceptable influence tactics and encourage good logical presentations, avoidance of secretive or selective operations and personal blaming when things go wrong, and give each other the benefit of doubt.

• Develop roles, sponsors, and champions that value virtual teaming. Help to recognize and work with gatekeepers who are key links between various subgroups, bridging differences and filling structural holes.

References are available on request.

Write to: Shalini.krishnan@rushacareers.com