Question

Please discuss the collaboration process, both in general and specifically as it relates to your experience working with the virtual company--how is it working with others? What challenges have you encountered, and what benefits have you found?

Answer 1

The Collaboration process while working is a combined effort of every member of a team or group to accomplish the given objective. For example, teams working towards social media management would comprise members responsible for the content, editing, digital marketing, and quality. All members would need to collaborate with each other to attain the set targets. This is usually easy in a normal setting where team members meet often and can actively engage in discussions and convey the feedback of the team members. However, this is a bit challenging when it comes to the virtual team.

In my experience working for a virtual team, the main communication is through the company chat link that serves as a platform to convey information and share feedback. The work done by a member is uploaded into a common drive and then checked into the list that contains the daily report. A member does not have to personally convey the amount of work done in a day but just update the report on a daily basis. The quality team immediately goes through the documents and if approved lets the uploading team finish the task. Sometimes, they feel the need to call the content writer to make changes. Therefore, working in a virtual team is mostly concerned with regularly updating the reports and there is a meeting on Zoom every two weeks to get an update from the team leader.

Challenges: Communication can be a challenge while working with virtual teams, in case of any technical issues. It is hard to resolve problems when communicating over a virtual platform. Another challenge is the relationship with workers is hardly there and most of them do not know each other. the bi-weekly meetings are not as productive as they should be. The schedule fixed for every worker is hard to adhere to as the workload increases.

Benefits: One of the main benefits of working in a virtual team is there is minimal supervision. This is a good thing as it enables high productivity and less pressure of being miro-managed. This setting benefits the overall morale of the employee. The other benefit is that it is also better to update the final report instead of reporting personally to the team leader daily. The strictly professional relationship benefits introverts as they do not have to be pressured to engage with people out of social obligation.