When interviewing many leaders of virtual teams for my PhD research and through my own experience leading virtual teams, I have come across an interesting challenge for leading these teams. The challenge relates to performance management and performance appraisal in teams which are distributed or global, particularly in relation to fairness and equity. Team members who work in a different physical location from their manager (who undertakes the performance appraisal) may receive different appraisals from their colleagues who physically sit close to the team leader. For example, a distributed team member might be working hard at their deliveries, but unless they are particularly good at informing their manager about their activities or the manager is very good at remote monitoring it might make it very difficult to assess that person’s performance on the task.
However, this conclusion above has been gathered from interviews and should form the basis of a scientific study to see whether or not this is accurate. It could be the case where teams members working virtually might think they are discriminated against in performance appraisals but it might not be actually so.
Even so, there are some focus areas for virtual team leaders in relation to ensuring their fairly rate performance of virtual team members as they would for those located physically close to them:
1. Ensure role clarity with SMARTER goals
As for face-to-face teams, a team leaders should ensure they have clear goals and expectations for their team members. This is even more important in virtual teams than in face-to-face teams. Goals should be set to suitable frameworks, such as SMARTER goals:
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Relevant
T – Time-bound
E – Evaluate
R – Reevaluate
2. Monitor employees closely
Use both traditional methods and innovative methods to monitor employees work performance closely.
Traditional methods can include:
a) Submitting daily/weekly progress reports.
b) Closely checking quality of reports
c) Allow time for informal feedback on progress – feedback is very important to an employee’s performance. So schedule time so they can contact you or allow free time where they can contact you as required.
d) It is good to have regular contact with remote workers in any case as it can be quite lonely for some. By contacting them you can also check informally how progress has been. When contacting employees in this way, make sure you use the phone or video conference option rather than relying on email. Email can be very impersonal and you aren’t able to judge the non verbals as well using other more media rich technology.
Innovative methods:
a) Monitor web activity/computer usage (e.g. software used, key strokes, livemeeting, page capture software etc)
b) Ask an employee to have a desktop video camera on all the time, so you can check in as needed and see where they are
c) Monitor email activity (e.g. emails sent, who to etc)
Note that many of these might depend on your company’s culture, how much trust you want to demonstrate to your employees (see below) or privacy policies for monitoring employees. If you do monitor employee activity, the best policy is to be as open as possible with employees and accept their feedback on this matter.
3. Trust your team members:
Whether or not you decide to monitor employees it is important that you can trust employees to work virtually. The main thing to ensure they are effective working virtualy is to provide:
a) Suitable training to allow them to know how to work remotely. It is very different from working in a closely monitored physical environment.
b) Clear expectations for virtual work and deliverables
c) A work environment that allows them to feel comfortable. For example, if they are working from home, ensure they have a fast internet connection, good lighting and regular breaks. Their environment at home should reflect the environment they would have in an office location.
It is also wise to be respectful of flexible work times. Some employees might work less during a day and more in the night time to balance work and life preferences. So understand a team members work preferences.
4. Involve in activities
Socialization and networking are very important requirements in being able to execute in a role. As a leader of a virtual team, you should facilitate this by organizing suitable events to provide the ability for team embers to form bonds with each other. You can do this in a virtual way (e.g. informal chat rooms where topics are not related to work tasks but just allow for informal discussions) or in a face-to-face environment. Even if an employee works in a remote location, it is good to occasionally bring them into the main location to build relationships.
5. Telling truths from lies
In a virtual environment, it can be very difficult to tell truths from lies, particularly when media is used that is low in ‘richness’, e.g. email. I had an example of a leader who managed a number of people remotely. One of his employees called in sick one day and used email to inform him they were ill. The manager did not believe this individual and went to take disciplinary action. However, it turned out this person was genuinely sick. So, as a manager of remote workers ensure that you use the right technology for the right context and verify information. It is a lot more difficult to gauge this over email, so use phone or video conferencing where appropriate to provide you with more non verbal information.
In summary, managing and monitoring performance in virtual teams can be very difficult. By following the tips above, you should find this assists in both improving performance of remote works as well as your ability to be aware of what a virtual team worker is undertaking in their day to fay activities.
