How to Use Virtual Team Work in Your Organization.

Several years ago, Harvard Business Review published an extensive study that shows that virtual teams can be more effective than regular ones if specific rules and tools are used. Intranet is one of the means or, more precisely, the framework of virtual teams.

I recently searched Amazon for the keyword "virtual teams" and found 417 results. Collaboration tends to become the most important business paradigm.

It is often thought that working in virtual teams requires only small adjustments to familiar work skills and that poor performance and increased stress are inevitable. But working in virtual teams is very different and requires new skills and knowledge that we can not transfer from face to face.

In this article we will show that the very large territorial network of large organizations forces us to perfect the work in virtual teams and we will also show that the intranet is the working environment, by excellence, for the virtual teams.

In the book "Virtual Teams: People Working Across Boundaries with Technology" Jessica and Jeffrey Stamps Lipnack shows that the success of a virtual team is based 90% on the people involved and 10% technology (under regulation 90/10).
Virtual teams, otherwise known as GDT - geographically dispersed teams of people, are defined as teams of people interacting, primarily, electronically and meeting only occasionally. Examples of virtual teams include teams working in different geographic areas and whose members use technology to simulate reality.

Through Microsoft Teams, you can get real-time, flexible communication and keep everyone in touch. You can always browse content and chat history, including team chats with Skype that are visible to the entire team. Private group chats are available for smaller group conversations.

Let's look at the few key areas that need to be approached with great care when we want to solve the problem of communication. With the help of technology, a team can efficiently handle the following issues:

Centralization
Centralize everything. Not having access to the latest information can severely limit a member of the team in performing tasks. The first step in building a better communication is to put everything in one place and be accessible by all team members. Any information that is not accessible to everyone is something that someone will be looking for at a critical time. Virtual teams need to define an area on the Intranet, the area of ​​the site, the project site, where they store the information in document libraries, image libraries, etc. A team hub is MS Team. Give your team instant access to all the things they need directly in Office 365 through Microsoft Teams.

Know what's going on
Having everything located in one place is too little if team members do not know what to do. Telling each member of the team what things to do and when is a critical element for team success. The intranet provides an appropriate visibility of the team's work as well as their evolution.
The intentions of a team and the achievement of goals are closely interrelated. Both must be clear, otherwise there will be confusion. It is necessary for a team to have a purpose to devote to and to concretize it. In addition, the team must develop a common approach or a way to work together to achieve their goal. The team can create an event calendar on the Intranet, set alerts, be notified in real time about changes made by other team members, interact through forums, email, and recently through Microsoft Teams, the new workspace based chat in Office 365

Every opinion counts
The only and most important resource of the team is the opinion of each member. A team requesting input from each team member earns additional insight into the possible ways to solve new problems. The intranet provides the means for this: surveys, forums, MS Teams.

There are four basic types for human groups:

working groups;
groups of friends;
command groups;
interest groups.
There are some models of virtual teams:

Executive teams - are made up of managers who become members due to their position in the organization. These teams usually have a semi-permanent character, with responsibilities to specific divisions in the organization.
Project teams - are designed to deliver specific projects. Team members are selected for their role and experience with the project. These teams are created during the project period. For them, you can do Intranet site projects.

Practice Teams - Helps people who have the same tasks or who work in the same field and who can benefit from sharing the experience. The members of these teams are volunteers. These teams generally do not have specific features, but they are really set up in order to learn.
Here are some ideas to help build virtual teams:

teams have a face-to-face meeting from the start;
establish interdependence between team members;
for long-term or permanent teams a set-up of face-to-face meetings is established.
not only what, when and how the information will be shared, but also how the team members will respond to them;
clear rules and protocols for settling conflicts are established;
explicitly identifies the need for virtual team members to complement each other, to help and to create relationships;
recognizing and honoring diversity.
Some of the things necessary for an organization to create and use virtual teams are:

management processes and team development must be created, defined, conducted, tested and accurate;
team managers need to be trained in new team leadership strategies;
members must be trained in new ways of working;
organizational culture needs to be redefined to support new structures and processes;
organizational structures need to be modified to reflect new team dynamics;
reward systems need to be renewed to reflect new structures;
it is necessary to lay the foundations of the new information structures (IT) to support the teams;
management, measurement and control systems must be created.
Microsoft Teams is not just a hub for teamwork. It gives your team instant access to all the things they need directly in Office 365. All the content, as well as all your tools, people and conversations are available in the team's workspace. You enjoy predefined access in SharePoint, OneNote and Skype for Business. Work on documents directly in the app. Microsoft Teams is the new collaboration.