Building a Better Office:
Promoting Good Virtual Work Practices

Putting a well thought remote collaboration plan in place can make working at a distance seamless. Without it, you stand a good chance of having to cope with confusion and poor team morale.

Follow these guidelines to put a plan in place that will have your virtual teams operating smoothly.

Provide formal training on work practices.
The best way to help remote team members work effectively is to conduct a group training session where all virtual employees are introduced to the same set of work practices. This might be a two-hour live training or an online session. By training the team as a group, workers become comfortable about policing each other in proper virtual work habits. For example, if one of your cost-cutting work practices is to use instant messaging instead of phone calls for standard communication, team members can help each other adopt this habit by pointing out instances when a call was unnecessary.

Provide training for collaboration tools.
We all know that employees are less likely to use work tools without training. Make sure that all virtual employees are formally trained in the proper use of online shared calendars, collaboration tools, contact databases and other resources that will be accessed by multiple workers in multiple locations. Make sure training materials remain accessible so that existing users can refresh their skills and new team members can be brought up to speed quickly.

Distribute a contact list.
Provide employees with a complete list of contact information for every person on the team so they can always reach each other. A good way to do this is to keep a shared contact database available online, such as the one included in bCentral's SharePoint Team Services. This way, if one person changes her contact information, everyone on the team knows about it immediately.

Hold regular group meetings.
It's easy to get lonely when you're working away from other team members. One way to avoid this problem is to regularly gather all staffers in a virtual room to review work progress. How often you plan these meetings depends on the nature of the work you're doing. If team members are working on projects that change daily, a weekly meeting may be needed. For slower moving targets, twice-monthly or monthly meetings may be enough, with smaller groups meeting more frequently. If possible, have these meetings in person every few months. Meeting face-to-face will build employee loyalty and help teams cement good working relationships.

Ask for feedback.
Productive remote work requires two-way communication. It's important to solicit feedback so employees can talk about what's working and what's not. When remote collaboration is new, you may want to talk to team members directly to solicit comments. After everyone is working comfortably, you might automate a feedback channel. For example, you could set up an online bulletin board and assign a staff member to monitor it and distribute worthwhile comments.