Bridging the Divide

Virtual teams, including those dispersed around the world, are a reality of the current workplace, as more organisations operate across different markets and geographies. Many studies have shown that the quality of engagement can be greatly affected by the smallest degrees of dispersion, such as working on different floors in the same building.

The sooner leaders of international organisations acknowledge this challenge, the sooner they will understand that with the appropriate tools and processes in place, dispersed teams can significantly outperform their co-located counterparts in terms of engagement and collaboration.

The different types of dispersed teams:

• Spatial Separation - Team members can be seated “across the hall” or be “scattered worldwide.”
• Geographical Separation - Teams are split across different locations (e.g., five members in one location and two in another).
• Temporal Separation - Teams are separated by time zones, with little overlap during working hours.
• Cultural Separation - Differences in both around organisational culture, as well as in nationality, regions, or ethnic groups.

Source: “How to Manage Virtual Teams,” MIT Sloan Management Review

Tip 1: Empower local leadership while listening to them

Rather than imposing a ‘one size fits all’ model on all countries, central teams or office headquarters should empower local leaders to decide when they can act autonomously and when to escalate. Trusting local leadership to make the call in critical situations while enabling them to understand the central position gives them a sense of ownership and belonging, while feeling valued for their local perspectives.

Provide guidelines instead of rules when managing local leaders. Steer clear of imposing rules on local leaders about managing local operations and customers - they know their local market best!

Instead, provide basic principles and questions that local communicators should ask themselves, to get them thinking in a way aligned to the Group strategy and brand while keeping flexibility.

Tip 2: Invest in technology to facilitate peer collaboration and learning

Invest in the right channels that allow a dispersed workforce to communicate and collaborate effectively and feel engaged with Group activities and strategic developments. Ask local users what is lacking in existing collaboration tools that they would find useful in a social network. Try to involve local users with designing the structure and content of the site based on their needs and publicly recognise and reward positive sharing behaviours.

Examples of channels that would help dispersed employees:

• Email: for informing others
• Instant Messaging (IM): to get quick answers
• Wiki/Q&A Forum/Yammer: to crowd-source and share knowledge
• Shared Network Drives: to centrally store and capture documents as well as Group-approved resources and templates
• Conference Calls and Video Conferences: great for in-the-moment sharing among cross-geography teams, soliciting feedback and agreeing on decisions

While virtual connections are great, complement virtual networks with regular in-person meetings and training webinars. Make the networks a natural extension of the work of local representatives and embed them in work processes. Introduce mentor or buddy program to match Group leaders with local ones as part of your network so local employees can forge strong, trusted relationships with counterparts back in their home market.

Tip 3: Reward & recognise dispersed employees fairly

Adequate recognition increases employee engagement and consequently, employee performance and retention. However, a key challenge for managing dispersed employees is ensuring they feel rewarded fairly and their achievements are recognised.

Reward techniques that work for dispersed teams:

• Link rewards to organisational goals: Reward an action or behaviour that links to the organisation’s larger mission, vision, and values. This way dispersed employees are reminded that they do contribute to the larger strategic focus and are assessed fairly against shared goals and values despite their geographical locations.

• Involve employee preferences: Ensure that the recognition is meaningful to the local employee receiving it and tailor recognition based on what motivates local employees e.g. while a case of wine is well acceptable as an incentive in a western market, Asians might prefer a local dining voucher instead.

• Communicate the recognition program across the organisation: Champion the accomplishments of your local employees to the wider team and offer rewards to incentivise others to participate.

• Reward in timely manner: Give recognition close to when the positive action occurs to form explicit link between the performance and the result, regardless of the employees’ geography.

In an age of reduced recognition budgets, empower local managers to use low-cost rewards to differentiate employee performance and contribution in a tailored way that appeals to local employees. For example in Asia, public acknowledgment is a key driver of employee engagement so opt for a “kudos” section in the organisation’s intranet or newsletter, create a local in-branch “Wall of Fame” to honour special achievements or offer employees the opportunity to have lunch with a member of senior management.

In Western markets, development opportunities may be more well-received, so you may explore allowing a recognised employee to represent the company at an external event or presentation, nominating the employee to attend a training workshop, or providing the employee a secondment opportunity in a market outside his/her home country.