When establishing a virtual team, or when moving between cultures for business, team composition diversity can present some difficulties for both new and experienced managers and team members.

In many cultures, principally those with a North America or European base, teams are typically made up of a group of experts and specialists, essentially a team of individuals, with some less experienced support personnel.  Typically these team members expect, culturally, to be treated as individuals and recognised individually for their achievements and contribution to the outcomes of the project.  They expect that their rewards, bonuses and career prospects will also be developed based on their personal value to the group.

In contrast, in large numbers of other cultures, principally Asian and South American, teams are made up of a group of complimentary workers who’s strength is their team work, many will still be experts in their fields, but they work more as a collective.  Individuals in these teams see the performance of the collective as more important than the performance of an individual, and will often sacrifice their personal ambitions against the overall success of the group.  These teams expect that their performance will be recognised collectively, and that their rewards and career prospects will depend as much on the overall performance of their team, as on their individual contribution.

Individual Challenges Of Team Composition Diversity

Team composition diversity can be a subtle, yet challenging phenomenon to adjust to when working across cultures.  For those used to working in highly individualistic structures, the personal challenge of suppressing their personal identity to become part of a collective can be difficult to adjust to.  It is not easy to go from being seen as an individual and rewarded as such to being seen as part of a group.  Equally, for those moving from a collective society to a more individualistic one, the change can pose challenges in asserting their individuality and, feeling comfortable in expressing their personal views, rather than the considered views of the group.

Cross Cultural Challenges Of Team Composition Diversity

When working as a manager in a cross cultural environment, the challenges of team composition diversity mean that the manager must be able to lead using a number of different styles.

When leading a team of individualists, the global virtual team manager must be able to address the needs of each individual, to consider their personal needs and to tailor the way they lead to the expectations of these individuals.  Even at a group level, the way meetings are run needs to consider the need these individuals have, to express themselves and feel they are contributing personally.  With the collective side of their teams, these same leaders need to be able to lead groups who expect to be treated as collectives, to inspire and challenge them as a group to deliver the outcomes needed for the project.

Learning to get the most from a global virtual team, one made up of groups from different points along the individual versus collective continuum, is a challenging and exciting experience.  Once the team leader has developed an understanding of the ways to get the best from each group, they are able to balance tasks so that each assigned task plays to the strengths of the group to which it is assigned.  So tasks requiring a large amount of individualised effort would be assigned to members of the more individualistic teams, where tasks that require larger amounts of interaction and an overall group effort are sometimes better suited to members of the collective culture teams.

It can take a little time to get the balance right, but, once an understanding is reached by all parties, the possible outcomes can be extremely rewarding ...

It’s been said that the eight most frightening words in international business are “I’m from head office, I’m here to help”.  The fear that an impending visit from head office can invoke in some support offices, coupled with the desire of those running the sub offices to make sure everything is just right for the visitors, can mean that the events feel more like a combination of a stage managed visit by royalty and an inquisition, than a business trip that should at least in part be aimed at building relationships.  If they are run this way neither party will get anything close to what they want from the visit. So, here are a few tips for visiting virtual team offices.

Avoid Invoking a Sense of Fear and Intimidation

Business visits can be intimidating both for the visitor and the visited. It is easy to forget but for many offices, visits from head office are a once in a quarter or even a once a year opportunity to both demonstrate their capabilities and also to raise any issues. As such, a lot of pressure can be placed on the host office personnel to be ready for the visit and to use it to showcase their skills.  Equally, for the visitors, it may be that a particular visit is part of a global or regional tour and may come as part of a series of visits, they can be high pressure and very busy and stressful events.  It is no less the case in a virtual team project environment, where visits may include intensive project reviews and negotiations over future scope.

So, with all parties trying to be at their best there is a real opportunity that even the slightest hiccup can turn into a major disaster for one party or another.  Small issues can get magnified under the intense scrutiny of the visit, even non issues may seem to be big issues if staff start to get flustered under pressure.

My recommendation is, when visiting virtual team offices, therefore to try to maintain a lower level of tension in the overall meeting.  Set a sensible agenda well ahead of the meeting, clearly identify what the key things to achieve from the visit are and try to at least cover most of them at a high level in the first session.  Doing this will mean that any gaps that appear during the first review can be worked on in the background over the course of the visit and hopefully closed out before the end.  The alternate of addressing each item in detail sequentially will mean that some things will logically be left until the end of the visit and, if issues are found with them, they will be harder to address before the end.

Be Culturally Sensitive When Visiting Virtual Team Offices

Try to be as culturally sensitive as possible during your visit, if you are visiting an office where they start late and finish late, try to fit in with that, likewise, if the office starts early do so also. It will allow you the opportunity to see the office in as normal a way as possible and will mean the personnel involved in your visit can maintain a standard week.  If the office takes long lunches do so, even if it feels like a waste of some of your time.  Actions like these show a lot of respect for the locals and will give you some extra credit with the staff, for very little effort.

Also, when visiting virtual team offices, try to be as observant as possible on the local customs for how to address colleagues, learn how their hierarchy functions and how it differs from your home culture, and try as much as possible to understand how the office functions.  It may well function quite differently from your home office, but the differences are as likely to be the result of local cultures and customs and will make sense in that environment.

Be Social

Often, when visiting virtual team offices, the host office will want to have some form of social event to give the visitors the opportunity to meet personnel inn a more relaxed environment.  These events are very important for the hosts and the...

There are a great many ways in which organisations can get into trouble with their virtual teams, many of them, taken in isolation, will not cause too large a problem, but once two or more problems occur concurrently, or even sequentially, things can begin to unravel quite quickly.

Following are a few of the common virtual team problems, along with some suggestions for how to avoid them. These mistakes are not identified in any particular order, but they are some of the biggest and most common.

Assuming That Traditional Methods Will Do

Many organisations get into virtual team execution having been successful at executing work in single locations. They assume their success in their traditional approach will automatically carry forward to a multi centre model. The reality though is that by trying to apply the same methods, practices and leadership style to a multi centre, potentially multi cultural structure is not so simple.

Systems and processes developed for single centres tend to make a lot of assumptions about the culture of the host office, they become part of the natural way of working for those in that office and make a lot of unstated assumptions about how lines of communication will operate. Transposing these practices onto another location will present the new location with an alien way of working, one which may well not fit with their established practices and may even be less productive than their previous approach.

Ignoring Culture

Culture, of the individuals, the organisation and the locations plays a enormous part in the way an office and a business operates. Every individual will have their own cultural perspective on life, one that is developed over their lives based on the norms and expectations of their home society, where they grow up and who they associate with. This culture will pervade everything they do and how they work with others. Organisations develop a culture driven from their founder, shareholders, management, staff and home culture.  Similarly, every location will have its own cultural norms, even if all of the offices are in the same country there will still be some differences.

For an organisation to then ignore the impact of culture on their systems, their communications and the way they interact is asking for trouble. Any personnel required to interact with those from another locations should have the opportunity to access appropriate training and support to help them collaborate better.

Under Estimating Leadership Style

Successful leaders of single centre work tend to be extremely good at understanding both the visible and invisible issues facing their team, they can read situations clearly and recognise intuitively how to get the best from their people. Single centre leaders however are not always so good when challenged to lead multi centre, diverse teams. Successful leaders of virtual teams need to be able to understand the subtle and not so subtle signals coming from each of their offices and respond accordingly, they need to be more comfortable with ambiguity, very even tempered and comfortable in delegating responsibility to trusted colleagues in the other offices.

Many organisations will put their best single centre manager in charge of a multi centre project without considering their overall suitability, only after some real issues start to surface will they then reconsider the deployment. Redeploying those who have been unsuccessful in leading a multi centre team can have negative impacts on their careers, confidence and retention which is an unfortunate and often unnecessary outcome for otherwise talented and valuable personnel.

Cutting Costs

Many organisations will also enter into multi centre execution in an attempt to save costs of delivery. They apply the same estimating methods and metrics with different salary rates, as they would in their home office, but with no allowance for either regional variatio...

Communications in virtual team environments can sometimes feel like navigating a minefield with an out of date map, you know where many of the issues lie but there is always a small doubt somewhere in your mind that an unknown trap is about to ensnare you.  So too is the challenge of email use in virtual teams, most of the time things are fine then suddenly something will explode in your face and leave you feeling scared and unsure of where to head next.

Email Trust Challenges

As teams become more dispersed, and particularly as they are separated by increasingly large timezone differences, the need to use asynchronous, written communication over verbal, synchronous communications increases the reliance on email.  The increased email use pushes individuals and teams to become more concise in their communications, in turn removing many of the pleasantries and verbal checks and balances we all take for granted when communicating verbally or face to face.

Without these checks and balances, team communications will inevitably become more technically focussed.  Without the human personality in the communications, building and maintaining a trusting environment becomes harder and relationships become more transactional rather than collaborative. The emails turn into a series of instructions, demands and responses, where a verbal equivalent would comprise requests and answers, with personal discussion and input in between.

Additionally, once a high reliance on email begins, it is easy to become over loaded with email.  The 50 to 100 new emails that greet a virtual team member on a morning can seem like an unending list of tasks, without any real priority or pleasantry.  As such, the recipient will do their best to respond to as many as possible, but will inevitably start to slip behind, leaving some virtual colleagues wondering where their response is and whether their virtual colleague is there at all.

Uncertainty in email correspondence can result in repeat emails, increasing terseness in correspondence and attempts to escalate the question to a superior, or attempts to circumnavigate the original recipient by asking the same question of colleagues, thus duplicating the work and spreading the potential distrust.

Email Overload

In parallel to the challenges of dealing with increased email use comes the difficulties associated with email overload. Someone overloaded with email will typically start to triage their correspondence, dealing with those that seem most important first and continuing until they runout of time. Those left over will remain until the next day and so forth.  The backlog will progressively accumulate until their email inboxes start to become completely unmanageable, with hundreds or even thousands of unread emails, each representing a potential unanswered request.

This email overload then stops corresponding individuals from following the normal civilities such as acknowledging assistance, it is simply too time consuming to write an email to thank someone for their help, so the help goes un acknowledged and another opportunity to build and maintain trust is sadly lost.

Getting Virtual Team Email Use Right

Understanding the issues with email use in virtual teams can help teams get better value from both the technical and relationship sides of email, below are some tips and traps to consider;

* Wherever possible communicate verbally and follow up with email where needed.

* Only copy people who absolutely need to know or be part of the conversation. Ideally include everyone in the “to” line rather than some in the “cc” line, many people will filter “cc” emails and only deal with them when they have free time.

* Be explicit in your requests, give context and a realistic response time, this allows the recipient to prioritise work and get back to you in a timeframe that suits everyone.

Anyone managing or working as part of a distributed team will recognise that, from time to time, things change.

Sometimes things change for the better, sometimes less so.

These changes can be in the status of the work or project being performed by the team, changes in the client’s expectations and scope or changes to the business climate in which the work is being performed.

Changes are typically most noticeable when a project passes through a major stage change, or when an ongoing organisational team changes its focus such as in a corporate reorganisation.  At these change points it will be usual for the business or project to pause and review its structure and practices.  These reviews are, however, almost exclusively performed on the technical and operational aspects of the organisation or project and rarely on the workforce and their changing interaction needs.  Rarely is a distributed team review conducted.

Why Conduct A Distributed Team Review

Even the most effective, high performing virtual team will, from time to time, benefit from a review of processes.  Taking the opportunity to undertake a little fine tuning to boost the team’s effectiveness or change its focus, reflecting changes in the working environment and project or business needs.  A poorly performing virtual team, or one which has not been reviewed for an extended period, will benefit from a more extensive review, possibly some changes to personnel and restructuring to try to return it to a higher level of performance.

Aims Of A Distributed Team Review

A distributed team review should aim to bring the team to its optimum functionality and level of performance relative to the business needs.  To achieve this, firstly establish an understanding of the baseline functionality and performance level of the team in question. At the same time, an understanding of the current and immediate, short term future needs of the organisation should be assessed, so that the team and its goals can be compared.

Any functional issues within the team need to be identified and addressed, regardless of the focus of the future needs of the team.  These may include things such as structural issues, conflicts needing to be resolved, inefficient or inappropriately assigned teams and individuals, and basic procedures and practices that are no longer suitable for the way the distributed team is operating.

Learning From Your Distributed Team Review

Having established a baseline of efficiency of the distributed team, along with an understanding of the background changes needed, the next step is to consider the way in which the team will need to function in the future.  Assess how the project or organisational needs are changing and how these changes will impact the distributed team and its requirements.

Using the information gained from the review two things can be established:

* A retrospective understanding of the way in which the team was working can be documented,  providing learnings for future, similar endeavours.  This data will allow the organisation to learn from its past and, if necessary, do things differently in the future, becoming a more effective virtual team organisation along the way.

* Develop plans for the future of the distributed team, so that it can continue to be as effective as it was previously and, ideally, improve its effectiveness.

With the benchmarking information in hand, the management and personnel of the distributed team can implement considered improvements and changes, changes that will place the organisation as well as possible, ready for the future demands of the anticipated changes in its working environment.

Benefits A Regular Distributed Team Review

Regularly pausing to conduct a distributed team review allows an organisation the opportunity to continually identify and learn from its current practices.

Working in a distributed team exposes every member to a broader range of experiences and challenges than those faced by their co-located team colleagues.  Distributed team members have to manage not just the tasks they are assigned and the relationships with their geographically co-located team members, they must also interface and collaborate with the members of their team who are located elsewhere.

Distributed team collaboration requires a great deal of additional empathy, beyond the needs of a traditional single location team. To be effective in distributed teams, members must have a high level of empathy, giving an increased level of awareness and understanding to the differences and issues faced by their virtual colleagues.

Forms of Empathy

Empathy requirements in distributed teams are such that, to be able to work at their most effective, the team members should be sensitive to the cultural, temporal and social differences between themselves and their colleagues. These same expectations exist in a traditional co-located project, but the combination of physical proximity and the relatively homogeneous nature of co-located teams, mean that it is easier to be aware of and allow for the circumstances of colleagues seen every day, than it is those perhaps never met.

Cultural Empathy

Cultural empathy in a distributed team includes the challenges of being aware of and working with the cultural circumstances of ones colleagues.  Culture includes the national and religious culture of the individuals involved, the culture of their working environment and any other cultural similarities and differences that may exist between the team members. Gaining an understanding of other cultures can be gained through conversation, background reading, training and actual lived experience, all of which add to the understanding of those involved.

It is incumbent on every team member, regardless of their location, to appreciate that personnel working in different locations, and often indeed in the same location, will see things through the lens of their own experiences and that these experiences will colour the way they approach their lives and the work they perform. As such, making an attempt to understand and be empathetic to the cultures of colleagues can help build a better understanding of challenges and issues that may have an impact on the working relationship.  This awareness should then help avoid unnecessary conflict and disagreement when misunderstandings arise.

Temporal Empathy

Temporality, the different way in which individuals value, manage and experience time, can be the source of many business disagreements. From relatively minor issues such as timeliness of attending meetings and responding to communications through to major issues around the different ways that schedules are seen and managed, the way that time is seen and managed by others needs to be understood for a truly collaborative endeavour to be successful.

When setting up a new working relationship and establishing timelines for work the relative perceptions of time need to be only discussed and understood by everyone.  An examples of where an imprecise temporal relationship can cause issues would be where one group of personnel are highly time orientated and work with a strong focus on meeting scheduled times and dates to the potential detriment of the quality of the product are working with another group who place a lower value on timeliness than they do on, for example, accuracy and “perfection” of the final product.

This clash of temporality can lead to major fractures in the working relationship, fractures that can perhaps be avoided by a clear agreement at the start of the work as to whether time or quality are the principle driver for the work.

Social Empathy

Empathy to the social differences and demands of distributed team members can also help avoid some of the inevitable pitfalls that w...

Corporate politics are a fact of life in all businesses.  Love them or hate them, corporate politics is something you at least need to understand to be able to work effectively. Beyond that, to work effectively in a virtual team, you need to understand the politics of the organisation as a whole, along with that of each office.

At the heart of most politics lies power.  The quest for power by individuals and groups and then the wielding of that power to achieve an end. In public politics, the quest for power is to achieve the ambitions of one or another group, whether for the benefit of a large or small part of the population or to pursue the ideals of some who believe those ideals will be to the greater good of the rest of the population.  Corporate politics are not that different, individuals and groups will jockey for power and authority, both actual and implied, then use that power either for personal gain or the benefit of their faction.

Home Office Politics

Each office will have its own formal and informal power structure, whether it be clerical personnel withholding access to certain key staff, senior employees supporting favourites, managers employing family members or some groups of employees discriminating against others for any number of reasons, corporate politics is always present if often hidden from view.  To be successful in an organisation it is not always necessary to directly engage in corporate politics, but it is essential to understand how things work so that you can avoid the major traps.  This understanding is usually only gained over time, through observation and experiences such as the results of upsetting one faction or another.

Once you have recognised the formal and informal power structures that contribute to and support the corporate politics in an office, working life can become easier since you will then know who to talk to outside of the formal structure to get things expedited, and equally who not to rely on.

Inter Office Corporate Politics

Corporate politics between offices are typically a result of one of a few of factors coming into play. The reward structure within the organisation may bias the way one office behaves toward another, there may be an overlap in either territory, product line or client base that leads to direct competition between offices or there may be a group in one location that believes they should have formal authority over some personnel in another location but that authority is not in place.  All of these situations will lead to direct and indirect tension and political manoeuvrings between staff in different offices, and most can be resolved by some careful management actions.

If an organisation genuinely believes in a virtual team approach, they must ensure that the reward structure and processes in the business reflect this, and that management and personnel are rewarded for their contribution to the whole organisation not simply to the interests of their own office.  It is of little benefit to the organisation to reward the performance of one office as a discreet unit if, to achieve that performance, the office compromised the efforts of another office.

Care must also be taken to manage overlap of any kind between groups and offices, and appropriate structural changes put in place. Likewise, competing teams should be evaluated and any structural changes enacted to remove or at the least alleviate the conflict. Any other forms of potentially destructive inter office rivalry should also be carefully monitored for and managed as and when it is found.

Virtual Team Corporate Politics

Most of the corporate politics experienced in traditional office structures will also occur in virtual teams, there are also some added potential issues that derive from the usually temporary nature of a virtual team. Some of the additional issues can come from issues such as time pressures to deliver work,

Entering the culture of a new country, or even just moving to a new city as an expat can be a huge shock for those involved. The largest impact will be on the individual and any accompanying family, but the personnel in the location the expat moves to can also experience a lesser degree of culture shock as they adapt to their new arrival.

Culture shock can vary from relatively small, such as would be experienced by those moving to a new city in their home country while remaining with their previous employer, to extreme culture shock, where the expats move to a new company in an unfamiliar country and, where the language and prevailing culture in the host country are substantially different to their previous experience.  This extreme level of culture shock can be further exaggerated if the expat has had little previous experience of relocations, and where they have accompanying family needing to settle into the new location.

The experience of culture shock starts, for some, before the actual relocation occurs and continues at varying degrees for many months after the actual relocation.

Before The Relocation

Culture shock can start before the expat relocates as they begin to learn about the new culture and likely experience of their move.  This will typically be a mix of excitement and fear, as the various aspects of the impending move start to become real.  The excitement of the change, new experiences and new challenges will inevitably be tempered by some level of self doubt and concern over the challenges ahead.  All of these, though, will be anticipatory rather than experiential, though the way the brain manages such things can be much the same.

At The Time Of The Relocation

The days and weeks immediately surrounding the expat relocation typically carry the highest culture shock risk.  The expat and any accompanying family are leaving the comfort and security of their home and home base for a new role in a new location, with potential language, culture and business shocks that will accompany the change.  For some, this period will pass relatively smoothly, for others it can become a nightmare that will colour the rest of their expat experience and, potentially a large period of their subsequent career.

For those who experience the extreme side of culture shock, this is often the result of just how different the new location is compared to their previous experience.  To work through the required period of adjustment it is good to try to find either a work colleague or a social contact who can share their experiences, make introductions and help with the overall adjustment process.  There are also some very good social networking platforms such as internations, who give access to local expat communities where new expats can meet with new and more seasoned expats and build a support network.

Life cycle Of Culture Shock

As time passes, the nature of the experience of the expat will change.  Typically there is a period of excitement and optimism prior to the relocation, followed by a drop in excitement and a sense of fear and risk during the weeks immediately following the relocation.  This is often followed by a renewed sense of optimism and excitement as things become clear and the expat starts to see the good side of the experience.  As more time passes, things will return to a more normal sense of being settled, with only the occasional fluctuation caused by either a new and pleasant experience or a new and unpleasant experience.

Cultural Xenophobia

Cultural xenophobia is the negative side of culture shock.  In this state, an expat experiences a feeling that most of what they see, experience and are exposed to in their new location is worse than what they recall of their home life.  This sense of cultural xenophobia should normally be transient, but for some it may never pass.

For many working in organisations with international operations, there will come a time when some form of relocation is required.  For some, this will be a short term visit of a few weeks to a couple of months in a different location, for others it will be an expat relocation lasting between months and years and, for a small number it could be a permanent relocation to a new country.  Each of these forms of relocation has its own challenges, both personal and professional, and each its own rewards.

Assuming that you are an established member of the organisation for which you work before your expat relocation, there are a number of things to consider before embarking on what will be a life changing experience;

* Will you be going alone or will you have accompanying family, are you going into a role you have performed previously or into a new role?

* How well do you know the personnel in your new location?

* What support network will you have, both in your original location and your destination?

* How long will your expat contract last?

* What forms of travel, financial and accommodation allowances are made in your contract?

* And finally, what happens if it all goes wrong?

Single or Accompanied Expat Relocation?

If you are single, the likely form of your expat contract will also be single status, if, however you are in a relationship, with or without children there are generally options to undertake an expat contract either single status or as a family unit.

Taking the single status expat contract as someone in a relationship is frequently the chosen option for those with high school age children, or where the partner is in a career they are unable to break without losing future opportunities.  This situation puts a lot of strain on both sides of the relationship and is one that needs careful consideration before making the commitment.  For some it works well, for others it will be a disaster, ending in separation or major contractual issues as they try to break their contract to return home.  Before making a decision either way seek out colleagues who have experience in the situation and get their guidance.

Previous Role Experience

There is little doubt that moving location in a consistent role is easier than taking a new role in a new location, however, for many expats the choice does not exist.  Many employees are relocated as part of their career development plan and, as such, will be in a new role at their new location.  Many others will be moving as part of a project progression, so moving to a new location to complete the next phase of their project.  So, for the majority of expats, the new location includes a substantially new role.

Known Or Unknown Colleagues

Taking an expat relocation where you are established in the organisation, and have had time to meet and build relationships with your colleagues in your new location, is a far less risky undertaking than one where you join the organisation and are immediately deployed to a new place of work.  I have seen a few instances where someone was hired into a company for a specific expat role, they quite literally pass through their home office, receive an induction and some plane tickets and head off to their expat posting, rarely have these postings been successful from the point of view of the organisation, though the individual’s experiences are often quite positive.

It is best, wherever possible, to have some period of establishment for the new hire, potential expat, to spend time in their office of hire before being deployed.  Taking this approach allows them time to learn the organisation and meet key individuals before they are posted.

Support Network

Having a support network in the home office can be extremely useful to the effectiveness of an expat relocation.  This network should include both formal and informal relationships,

Not for profit organisations operating across multiple locations face many of the same challenges a for profit organisation would, except they generally lack the funding and dedicated personnel to support many of the things for profit organisations are able to finance. These not for profit virtual teams must use their scarce resources of personnel and funds to deliver some of the functions a for profit would pay to have personnel dedicated to.

Generally a not for profit will be either a volunteer organisation or a charity, where the income collected is used principally to forward the aims of the organisation.  This leaves little, if any money, to pay for personnel development or the employment of specialists.  These not for profit organisations are also typically staffed by a combination of volunteers and paid personnel, with most of the people drawn to the higher goals of the organisation, often without some of the skills needed to operate in distributed team environments.

Not for profit personnel are typically passionate about the organisation’s cause and will dedicate many hours of their own time to the aims of the organisation, but again their available hours are frequently dictated by the available time outside of their day job.

Technology And Skills Access

With limited funding it is often difficult for not for profit organisations to access the tools needed to operate complex virtual teams.  They must spend their resources sparingly on things they need and make do with whatever they are able to find.  This scarcity of funding often limits them to using free communication tools like Skype, rather than higher spec’d video conference facilities.  It also leaves them reliant on learning through experience rather than being able to pay for specialist training.

High Personnel Turnover in Not For Profit Virtual Teams

Coupled with the limited access to tools and training, not for profit organisations often either have a high turnover of volunteers as individual’s lives progress and their circumstances change, limiting their ability to participate, or they have stagnant pools of volunteers who may not be aware of many of the evolving ways they could become a more effective organisation.  This real or potential high turnover or stagnation of personnel means that the costs of training can be high and the returns to the organisation relatively low.

Personnel Attracted To The Cause

Additionally, many personnel in these NFP’s are attracted to the cause, and will often work for free or for little financial reward.  As such, linking the performance of personnel to any form of payment is therefore very difficult, meaning that it is not possible to manage individuals performances, select for skills or offer tailored training, as the personnel may be in roles for which they are less suited but which they are passionate about.

Building An Effective Not For Profit Virtual Team

Faced with the challenges set out above, of a workforce largely made up of volunteers with a passion for the organisation’s cause and either a high turnover or a stagnant pool of personnel, the challenge for not for profit virtual teams is how to make the best of what they have.

I would suggest there are a number of things that such an organisation can put into place that may help:

* Codify their operational processes – Producing standard documentation that sets out how things are done will help any organisation with a high turnover of personnel retain some of its ability as personnel leave and are replaced. Having manuals and practices means that the next person can pick up reasonable easily when moving into a new role.

* Put in place solid and effective succession planning – having a realistic succession plan means that the organisation is able to bring replacement personnel up to the required skill level and level of contacts before they need to assume ful...