Dataprise CEO Blog: ‘4 Ways to Work in a Virtual Team’

With today’s technology employees can easily access each other regardless of where they are. Business travel can be expensive, time-consuming, and unproductive, with the present cutting-edge technologies available there are alternatives to travel and face-to-face meetings. Virtual environments effectively support a balanced work/life lifestyle and can help reduce your company’s overall carbon footprint.

Tips for building a virtual team:

• Virtual Conference Room
  Utilize web-based conferencing, which allows you to communicate with your co-workers no matter how far away they are. Everyone who attends these meetings can see the same information at the same time.

  One example is GoToMeeting (www.gotomeeting.com), an easy and affordable web conference tool. Web conferencing allows businesses to conduct meetings in a flexible, cost-efficient way without having to deal with the hassles of travel coordination.

• Create an Intranet
  An Intranet is a businesses website portal that is only used internally. Teams can share resources on the Intranet, and company information/news can be easily accessed by employees. An example of Intranet software is Microsoft’s SharePoint (sharepoint.microsoft.com).
• Instant Messaging (IM)
  IM is a free and effective tool for internal communication. IM allows you to view if your co-workers available, so you wont waste your time searching for them if they are in a meeting or out of the office.

  Most IM programs allow you to open a multi-person chat, which can be very useful for spontaneous, last minute meetings.

• Telecommuting/Remote Workstation
  Telecommuting (working from home or a “remote workstation”) has become increasingly popular. Employee’s can now access work servers and information from the comfort of their own home, actually improving work-life balance. Mobile phones, wireless devices, e-mail, text messages, IM and access to the web gives workers access to information in real time, 24/7.

As you can see, technology is continuously changing so that people can work from anywhere at any time. Virtual tools are easy, cost-efficient, and enable employees to work in a stress-free environment. It’s important to have an IT support partner like Dataprise, who keeps up with virtual technology trends, and can take care of the challenges that come along with maintaining a virtual team.