Why Virtual Team Is A Better Option?
Sector: Digital Product
Author: Nisarg Mehta
Date Published: 12/11/2018
Contents
The corporate landscape has witnessed massive changes in staffing and recruiting strategies in the last couple of decades. Presently, around 2.8% of the workforce, accounting for 3.7 million employees, work for at least half the time from home.
Forward-thinking companies have already switched to virtual teams to bolster their productivity. Around the globe. The Fortune 1000 companies are revamping the work arrangements to make their business environment more efficient.
Remote working programs and virtual team have emerged as an established part of the global business environment, offering tremendous benefits to business firms, when successfully integrated.
Apart from saving significant investments and time, virtual teams offer companies with a greater degree of flexibility. Business leaders are collaborating with established mobile app development companies, building dedicated apps to manage virtual teams.
Reasons to Hire a Virtual Team
Enterprises that are looking forward to find the right expertise and talent often find the best solution in virtual teams. Considering their budgetary requirements, they can save a lot of resources in developing the necessary infrastructure. At times, you may not need a physical office, but want the tasks to be done. In these situations, virtual teams turn out to be the most relevant solution. Besides, hiring across demographics may not always be possible due to legal and financial issues. Both established businesses and start-ups can benefit from virtual teams, mitigating operational hassles.
Here are the reasons for which you can hire a virtual team.
1. Cost-benefits
Virtual team involves hiring candidates at a substantially reduced expense. In case you source internationally, you can hire skilled staff at cheap rates. You simply need to pay for the length when you seek the services and the level of support required. You need not incur the overhead costs like parking and office spaces, computes, utilities, benefits and so on. A study conducted from the Sanford University states that a company can save around $2,000 on a yearly basis 0n each employee who works from home. Even if companies provide the employees with adequate funds to set up an office at home, the expenses remain significantly lower.
2. Access to skilled employees worldwide
With a virtual team, employers have the opportunity to tap a wider pool of talent. Instead of limiting the workforce to people who can commute to the office regularly, you can do away with the geographic restrictions altogether by hiring a virtual team. This will provide you with the access to skilled employees worldwide. You simply need to get across to the reputed app developers to build your business app, through which you can manage the staff efficiently.
3. Greater productivity
The productivity gets a boost when you hire virtual teams, as they have a greater amount of time at their disposal to work. On an average, these employees are likely to work for more than 40 hours on a weekly basis, as they remain at home. These employees need not spend time travelling to and their office and back. They remain energetic and channelize their abilities completely to the work. They also tend to take lesser sick days. With the desired level of collaboration through the mobile apps, they can achieve the goals, working from various time zones across the world.
4. Higher rates of retention
The retention rates for employees working from home are higher, as they enjoy a greater flexibility to manage other tasks. These employees can enjoy a better work-life balance, optimizing the available time in the best possible way. It is less likely for the virtual team members to quit, as they remain healthier and suffer from lesser stress levels. Most importantly, the employers can enjoy a complete suite of services from these teams, working to achieve a single goal.
5. Dedicated teams
Unlike freelancers, who take on multiple assignments at the same time, virtual employees remain on the payroll of the company for a short term. Evidently, they remain dedicated only to your projects for this predefined period of time. This enhances the quality of work and helps the business live up to the standards of the industry.
Why do you need a dedicated app to manage virtual teams?
Well, it is important to focus on the communication technology to ensure that the virtual teams perform as per the desired standards. According to a statistic, 50% of the virtual teams across the globe fail to realize their goals. Collaborating with colleagues who are located far off is not the natural way to operate for most professionals. Besides, if you are more dependent on non-verbal cues, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage the virtual teams.
The key challenges for virtual team management include:
- Making the employees stay focussed
- Allocation of human resources
- Employer oversight
- Affordable and efficient operation
- Optimal coverage of shift
- Making payments accurately to employees
- Collaborating efficiently
- Maintaining accountability
Business firms across the globe are increasingly implementing time-tracking software and mobile apps to optimize the workforce. With a dedicated app at your disposal, you can efficiently deal with the challenges stated above. Powerful apps like Slack, Trello and Hubstaff help employers manage the productivity of virtual teams efficiently.
How to mitigate challenges with a virtual team?
As a business leader, you need to establish a culture of communication in the organization to mitigate the challenges that arise while working with a virtual team. Addressing these challenges become simplified when you have a streamlined communication channel, that complements your efforts to keep the work organized.
Reputed mobile app developers have come up with robust apps for business firms, that simplify this process. The staff picks up the good habits when they work with a good communicator, that keeps them motivated and disciplined.
A dedicated app for managing virtual teams also removes the language barriers and enhances the communication process.
Project management apps like Asana and Jira, along with workforce automation tools like Zapier and Microsoft Flow have made virtual team management amazingly easy. However, you may still look out for business-specific solutions, while managing virtual teams.
Wrapping Up
Working with a virtual team could make all the difference to the growth and prosperity of your business. Like we saw, your business gets experienced professionals from across the globe at cost-effective prices. Though there are a few challenges, they can be fixed. And clearly, the pros outweigh the cons. So, hire virtual team for your next project or get in touch with us to find out how you can effectively go about it.
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