essay on virtual communication

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Five Ways to Improve Communication in Virtual Teams

New research reveals simple strategies that boost performance..

• Workplace, Teams, & Culture
• Collaboration
• Remote Work

As collaborative technologies proliferate, it is tempting to assume that more sophisticated tools will engender more effective virtual communication. However, our study of globally dispersed teams in a major multinational organization revealed that performance depends on how people use these technologies , not on the technologies themselves.

We asked team members to rate one another on virtual communication behaviors culled from a growing body of research on virtual teams . Peer assessments focused on five best practices: matching the technology to the task, making intentions clear, staying in sync, being responsive and supportive, and being open and inclusive. (Participants had worked together for some time and had been tasked with improving key business processes.) Individual scores were averaged to determine team scores.

When controlling for past experience on virtual teams and level of technology support available, we found that teams with higher scores on the five behaviors also received higher ratings from their leaders on producing quality deliverables, completing tasks on time, working productively together, and meeting or exceeding goals. Results indicated a linear relationship across the board: For every 10% that a team outscored other teams on virtual communication effectiveness, they also outscored those teams by 13% on overall performance. Although the research focused on dispersed teams, we believe the same strategies can help colocated teams, which increasingly depend on virtual collaboration tools.

Let’s look at each of the five behaviors in detail. They may seem basic at first glance, but we’ve observed that they are often overlooked. When teams are informed of these simple strategies and take steps to implement them, they outperform teams that don’t.

1. Match the technology to the task.

Teams have many communication technologies at their disposal, ranging from email and chat platforms to web conferencing and videoconferencing. People often default to using the tool that is most convenient or familiar to them, but some technologies are better suited to certain tasks than others, and choosing the wrong one can lead to trouble.

Communication tools differ along a number of dimensions, including information richness (or the capacity to transfer nonverbal and other cues that help people interpret meaning) and the level of real-time interaction that is possible. A team’s communication tasks likewise vary in complexity, depending on the need to reconcile different viewpoints, give and receive feedback, or avoid the potential for misunderstanding.

About the Authors

N. Sharon Hill is an associate professor of management at the George Washington University School of Business in Washington, D.C. Kathryn M. Bartol is the Robert H. Smith Professor of Leadership and Innovation at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland in College Park.

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Challenges to Managing Virtual Teams and How to Overcome Them

Remote work allows companies to compete in an increasingly globalized society, so the real challenge becomes adapting to the new workplace.

Rebecca Bakken

In theory, virtual teams give employers the chance to build a dream team without boundaries. For employees, it offers the freedom and flexibility to attain a healthy work-life balance. In practice, things aren’t always so rosy.

Communication can get muddled if teams never meet face to face, trust and collaboration suffer when workers are siloed, and sometimes it’s hard to tell if employees are tasked with too little — or too much.

Despite these challenges, virtual teams are here to stay. Remote work allows companies to compete in an increasingly globalized society, so the real challenge becomes adapting to the new workplace. 

The Rise of Virtual Teams

Statistics show a steep increase in the number of remote workers in the United States, a trend that is only likely to continue. In 2017, for instance, more than 60 percent of companies offered ad-hoc telecommuting benefits, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2017 Employee Benefits Report . 

In 2019, that number increased to 69 percent, according to SHRM’s  2019 Employee Benefits Report . Plus, the on-demand economy has resulted in more freelancers and contractors in the workplace. According to the latest data from Upwork , 35 percent of the US workforce engaged in at least some freelance or contract work in 2019.

And remote work has been shown to both increase productivity and lower attrition, according to research from a Stanford professor . His study showed that employees working remotely found it easier to concentrate and were less likely to take sick days or prolonged breaks. In addition, employers saved an average of $2,000 per employee each year on real estate costs.  

Still, large companies like Yahoo and IBM have recently walked back their work-from-home policies. This belies the trends but underscores the problems some businesses have with remote teams.   

Research published in the Harvard Business Review states that remote employees are more likely to feel alienated or disconnected when compared to onsite employees. These communication issues become a problem for leaders. If you’re managing a group of employees, you also need to think about whether everyone is working toward the same goal and putting in their appropriate hours.

Rather than reverting back to the old ways of doing business, you can directly address the challenges of managing virtual teams. When you successfully identify and remedy remote workplace issues, you can build a strong, agile team that’s collaborative from all corners of the globe.

“Managing a virtual team requires managers to double down on the fundamentals of good management, including establishing clear goals, running great meetings, communicating clearly, and leveraging team members’ individual and collective strengths,” says Julie Wilson , founder of the Institute for Future Learning and instructor at Harvard University.

Wilson co-teaches Essential Management Skills for Emerging Leaders , along with a roster of other experts.

Let’s examine the top three problems leaders encounter with remote employees, and the solutions to solve them. We’ll discuss issues pertaining to communication, trust, and productivity.

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Challenge 1: Communication

Communication is key in any workplace — especially one where most interactions occur via email, chat, or calls. Ensuring a free flow of accurate information throughout your company’s structure means hiring the right people, fostering a communicative culture, and using the right tools for the job.

“Close attention to relationship-building and a process to ensure good communication is really important. When the group or the organization has a strong culture that supports collaboration, this can stand in for many of the detailed steps — it really helps,” said Jennifer Stine, former head of executive and professional education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Solution: Hire the Right People

The interview process is a great way to find out how well someone communicates. Your employees’ communication skills are a big factor in the success of virtual teams.

Accurately gauging communication skills in one interview is hard. So consider having several rounds of interviews via multiple mediums.

If the person will work remotely full time, it’s important to see how they communicate through writing and on calls. That said, face-to-face communication can be telling. Try to arrange an in-person interview, if possible.

Also, have several hands on deck when interviewing new candidates to get a range of opinions. This also gives candidates a glimpse into your company culture, helping them determine if it’s a good fit.

Solution: Foster a Culture of Communication

As a leader, it’s your responsibility to foster a culture of communication throughout the organization. Lead by example by giving regular updates and holding check-ins with your team. If your staff sees that you’re an effective communicator, they’ll follow suit by picking up your good habits.

Be explicit about how your staff should communicate. Remove the ambiguity that so often surrounds workplace communication by providing written guidelines that outline what kind of messages should be sent through which mediums, and how team members are expected to interact with each other.

This is especially important when you have a culturally diverse staff or members who are located in different time zones. Address any language or time barriers directly. And provide tips on how to effectively communicate in spite of them. (For instance, if not everyone is a native English speaker, you might suggest that employees avoid using slang or colloquialisms.)

If possible, make a point to get the whole team together in person once or twice a year. Meeting face-to-face as a group is an ideal way to team-build. It allows remote employees the chance to get to know each other beyond their job roles.

Solution: Choose the Best Tools

Technology is what makes virtual teams possible. Don’t shy away from the tools and software that can make your job easier. Below is a list of the types of tools that can facilitate communication in virtual teams, and some popular options* for you to consider:

• Chat: Slack , Twist , Google Hangouts
• Project management: Trello , Jira , Asana
• Web and video conferencing: Google Meet , Zoom , Cisco Webex
• Collaboration and prototyping: Invision , Marvel , Adobe XD
• Scheduling: Calendly , Doodle
• Workflow automation: Zapier , Microsoft Flow , Monday

Not every tool is going to be a good fit for your team. Consider trial periods or task someone with researching all the options to determine which suit your needs best. Provide training for your staff on the tools you select to ensure everyone is using them consistently and to the fullest benefit.

Developing communication strategies that resonate across your entire organization, including in-person and virtual teams, can be challenging. Some of our Professional & Executive Development programs are designed specifically to help leaders deliver clear, concise messaging to their teams.

Challenge 2: Trust

Trust is key in any relationship. When employees trust their managers and believe they’re working toward a shared vision, collaboration and engagement happen naturally. But it’s hard won in an environment where face-to-face interaction is a rarity. A shared mission, collaborative spirit, and strategic team building can help instill trust in remote and onsite workers alike.

Solution: Establish a Mission Statement

In a few sentences, document why your business is doing what it’s doing. Ideally, this should speak to the greater good of humanity, but obviously related to your industry somehow.

Nontraditional workers (especially millennials) value mission-driven organizations because they want to feel their time is being used for something worthwhile. State your mission clearly and embed it in everything you do. Demonstrate your dedication to the cause by donating to charity, holding volunteer days or incentives, or partnering with nonprofits that share your mission.

Solution: Encourage Collaboration and Team Building

Effective collaboration helps teams bond and builds trust as people get to know one another’s thought processes and working styles. When staff are able to build on each other’s ideas and play to their strengths, relationships flourish.

First, it helps to have clearly defined teams. This sets the expectation that people should be working collaboratively, even from a distance. It may seem like a no-brainer, but startups and small businesses sometimes undermine collaboration by failing to form teams within the company. This can lead to confusion and low cooperation among employees. Particularly with remote workers, it’s important for people to know where they belong and to whom they report.

Encourage teams to meet regularly via video conference, as these virtual face-to-face meetings can help build a sense of community and familiarity. As a manager, be sure to communicate your expectations for each team so they know they’re working toward a shared goal.

Solution: Establish a Shared Goal

What is your team’s overarching goal and how will it know when it has achieved it? You might have one goal, or you might have several. Regardless, it is vitally important that your team has a shared goal (or goals) and a common understanding of how progress will be measured.

These goals will likely be dictated by broader business goals, or it may be up to you and your team to establish your goals. This is a great opportunity to meet in person if at all possible, get to know each other better as colleagues, and work through a strategic planning process. If it’s not possible to meet in person, this work can be facilitated via video conference.

Challenge 3: Productivity

Low productivity is an obvious risk when employees work outside of a traditional office. In an environment without day-to-day oversight, some team members may not use their time wisely. On the other hand, certain employees risk burnout when working remotely due to a lack of boundaries.

Solution: Ensure Accountability

Without invading privacy, the best way to ensure everyone’s doing their job is to set clear expectations for each role and have regular check-ins to gauge progress. It’s unrealistic to expect everyone to work at the same pace, but you should have a general idea of how long tasks take and how much each person is accomplishing week by week, if not day by day.

You might also find it’s necessary to have team members track their hours using a tool like Harvest or Toggl *, particularly for those who do client work, because it gives you a clear sense of billable hours spent.

Even for those who don’t perform work for clients, tracking hours provides an unparalleled level of transparency. By seeing how long it takes to complete certain jobs, you are able to set baseline expectations that are useful for both current and future roles.

Solution: Form Supportive Structures

Be sure to pay attention to your best performers as much as you do the rest of your team. These may be the people at risk of overworking themselves. Without the clear boundaries that office life provides, the go-getters on your team may have workdays that never end, setting themselves up for exhaustion and resentment toward the company.

Encourage your staff to keep regular business hours and take advantage of their paid time off. Check in if you suspect someone is burning the midnight oil. Erratic or moody behavior, emails sent at odd times, and a drop in work quality are all signs that a remote worker needs to take a breather.

Conduct regular one-one-ones with each team member to not only hold them accountable for performance, but also to check in on workload and support needed.

Solution: Develop Processes

Many teams may find daily stand-ups — a.k.a. daily scrums or huddles — are essential to fostering productivity, transparency, and collaboration. Having an informal group check-in each day keeps the team on the same page and holds everyone accountable for their daily tasks and ongoing projects.

In addition to group check-ins, make it a rule for managers to set up one-to-one time with their direct reports every month or quarter. This takes the stress out of a sudden request for a meeting, and gives employees a designated time to talk about their progress or any issues they might be having at work.

Devising a Game Plan

“Managing a virtual team can be challenging, but addressing those challenges head-on is worth the effort,” said Julie Wilson.

When you overcome the challenges, you’ll enjoy the rewards of leading a cohesive virtual team — i.e. setting goals and reaching them; watching your team members develop and lean into their strengths; and benefiting from a healthy team dynamic that ensures the right decisions are made and implemented.

The challenges and solutions discussed in this post are complex, so approach any changes methodically and seek outside counsel if needed. 

*Disclaimer: Mentions of any proprietary tools or software are merely examples and do not constitute endorsements by Harvard University or any of its subsidiaries.

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Challenges and barriers in virtual teams: a literature review

• Research Article
• Published: 20 May 2020
• Volume 2 , article number  1096 , ( 2020 )

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• Sarah Morrison-Smith   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4959-807X 1 &
• Jaime Ruiz 2  

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Virtual teams (i.e., geographically distributed collaborations that rely on technology to communicate and cooperate) are central to maintaining our increasingly globalized social and economic infrastructure. “Global Virtual Teams” that include members from around the world are the most extreme example and are growing in prevalence (Scott and Wildman in Culture, communication, and conflict: a review of the global virtual team literature, Springer, New York, 2015). There has been a multitude of studies examining the difficulties faced by collaborations and use of technology in various narrow contexts. However, there has been little work in examining the challenges faced by virtual teams and their use of technology to mitigate issues. To address this issue, a literature review was performed to highlight the collaboration challenges experienced by virtual teams and existing mitigation strategies. In this review, a well-planned search strategy was utilized to identify a total of 255 relevant studies, primarily focusing on technology use. The physical factors relating to distance are tightly coupled with the cognitive, social, and emotional challenges faced by virtual teams. However, based on research topics in the selected studies, we separate challenges as belonging to five categories: geographical distance, temporal distance, perceived distance, the configuration of dispersed teams, and diversity of workers. In addition, findings from this literature review expose opportunities for research, such as resolving discrepancies regarding the effect of tightly coupled work on collaboration and the effect of temporal dispersion on coordination costs. Finally, we use these results to discuss opportunities and implications for designing groupware that better support collaborative tasks in virtual teams.

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1 Introduction

Virtual teams (i.e., geographically distributed collaborations that rely on technology to communicate and cooperate) have several potentially beneficial aspects that aid productivity. Much like collaboration in co-located teams, collaboration in virtual teams refers to synchronous and asynchronous interactions and tasks to achieve common goals. The use of virtual teams allows organizations to enroll key specialists, regardless of their physical location [ 106 , 151 ]. This allows organizations to optimize teams by using only the best talent available [ 63 , 136 ]. In theory, virtual teams also reduce the need for travelling between sites, which should reduce costs in terms of time, money, and stress [ 196 ]. It was estimated that by 2016, more than 85 % of working professionals were in some form of virtual team [ 235 ]. This implies that, as a result, virtual teams have become vital to maintaining our increasingly globalized social and economic infrastructure.

Similar to co-located teams, virtual teams participate in a variety of collaborative activities such as formal and informal meetings using technology like video conferencing (e.g., Zoom [ 121 ] and Skype [ 175 ]) and text (e.g., Slack [ 232 ] and Microsoft Teams [ 176 ]), file transfer, and application sharing [ 191 ]. As a result, virtual teams are experiencing difficulties collaborating that are making it difficult for them to be as successful as co-located teams [ 64 , 151 , 191 ]. As a result, virtual teams spend substantial time and money to relocate team members for specific projects to avoid the hindrances to teamwork associated with distance [ 231 , 257 ]. It is therefore important to develop technology that can better support virtual teams, reducing the need for costly re-locations and mitigating the problems that arise when relocation is not a viable solution.

Despite previous research examining the difficulties faced by collaborations and use of technology in specific contexts, such as distributed software development, there has been little work in examining the challenges faced by all virtual teams and their use of technology to mitigate issues. This understanding is vital to the development and utilization of technology to support virtual teams. Thus, this paper has two goals: (1) to elucidate the factors and challenges that hinder collaboration in virtual teams and (2) provide recommendations for designing groupware to better support collaboration in virtual teams, while also identifying opportunities for the Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) community to design this technology.

To achieve our goals, a Literature Review (LR) was performed with a well-planned search strategy that identified a total of 255 relevant studies, primarily focusing on technology use. Based on the selected studies, we categorized challenges as being related to: geographical distance, temporal distance, perceived distance, the configuration of dispersed teams, and diversity of workers. In addition, results from this LR identify opportunities for research, such as resolving discrepancies regarding the effect of tightly coupled work on collaboration, the effect of temporal dispersion on coordination costs, and whether virtual teams encounter more work-culture related problems than co-located teams. From the synthesis of these papers, we present four design implications for designing groupware that better support collaborative tasks in virtual teams.

This literature review explores the factors and challenges associated with collaboration in virtual teams. This paper begins with a review of related LRs in the domain of collaboration in Sect.  2 and progresses to a description of the method used to conduct the LR in Sect.  3 . Sections  5 and 6 explore issues related to distance and other contributing factors, respectively. Next, in Sect.  7 , findings from Sects. 5 and 6 are summarized, leading to Sect.  8 which completes the LR by presenting a set of four design implications for the development of groupware that supports collaboration in virtual teams.

2 Related work

Prior work includes eight systematic literature reviews surveying various topics related to distance collaboration. These topics fall into two categories: investigations of virtual teams in the domain of distributed software development (DSD) and explorations of the factors that influence collaboration in broader contexts.

Research into the challenges faced in DSD have resulted in determination of the factors associated with the relationship between distribution, coordination, and team performance that are the most commonly studied in software development, namely dimensions of dispersion (e.g., geographical, temporal, organizational, work process, and cultural dispersion) and coordination mechanisms (e.g., organic or social coordination and mechanistic or virtual coordination) [ 183 ]. Several challenges (e.g., including geographical, temporal, cultural, and linguistic dispersion [ 146 , 185 ]) and best practices or practical solutions (e.g., agile methods, test-driven development [ 146 ], frequent site visits and face-to-face meetings [ 185 , 233 ]) have been identified for traditional DSD teams [ 185 ] and teams that use a ‘follow-the-sun’ approach (i.e., where teams hand off work at the end of the day in one time-zone to workers beginning their day in another) [ 146 ]. Additional work identified opportunities for future research, such as addressing challenges present in multi-organizational software projects and supporting the development of coordination needs and methods over the course of a project [ 184 ]. This category of research also includes a study that classified empirical studies in DSD [ 64 ], revealing that communication warrants further exploration to better support awareness in this context [ 239 ].

These studies are informative and discuss several of the challenges that appear later in this LR (e.g., geographical, temporal, cultural, and linguistic dispersion). However, it is not guaranteed that the findings from the DSD studies with regards to these dimensions directly translate to collaboration in another context. In contrast, this paper examines distance collaboration in all virtual teams.

Other studies have studied the factors affecting collaboration in general. Mattessich and Monsey identified 19 factors necessary for successful collaboration, including the ability to compromise, mutual respect and trust, and flexibility [ 167 ]. Similarly, Patel et al. [ 201 ] developed a framework based on the categorization of seven factors related to collaboration (e.g., context, support, tasks, interaction processes, teams, individuals, and overarching factors) for use in collaborative engineering projects in the automotive, aerospace, and construction sectors.

In contrast to the results of the DSD studies, these findings apply to a broad range of contexts. However, since these literature reviews primarily focus on co-located collaboration, it is difficult to discern how the factors identified by these studies influence virtual teams. This paper differs by focusing only on virtual teams.

Relevant papers were extracted for LR using the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and Charters [ 138 ] for performing Systematic Literature Reviews in software engineering, with the adjustments recommended by Kitchenham and Brereton [ 137 ]. These guidelines divide the review process into three steps:

Planning the review In this step, the research questions and review protocol are defined. This will be discussed in the remainder of Sect.  3 .

Conducting the review This step focuses on executing the review protocol created in the previous step. This will also be discussed in Sect.  3 .

Reporting the review This final step documents, validates, and reports the results of the review. This will be the subject of Sects. 5 and 6 .

3.1 Planning the review

This subsection will focus on developing the list of research questions used to generate the list of keywords for extracting papers and specify the search methodology.

3.1.1 Specifying research questions

The first stage of this literature review began by defining research questions using the Goal-Question-Metric approach described by Van Solingen et al. [ 258 ], which systematically organizes measurement programs. This model specifies the purpose, object, issue, and viewpoint that comprise a goal, which is then distilled into research questions and used to create metrics for answering those questions. The goal of this LR is:

Purpose Understand and characterize

Issue The challenges

Object Related to collaboration

Viewpoint Faced by workers in virtual teams

Using this goal, these research questions were derived:

What are the factors and challenges that impact distance collaboration?

What factors specific to distance cause issues?

What other factors contribute to these issues?

How can we design technology for supporting virtual teams?

The purpose of asking question 1 is to outline previous research investigating collaboration challenges. The expected outcome will be a comprehensive view of challenges affecting collaborations and identification of gaps or areas warranting future exploration. Research Question 1a will be the topic of Sect.  5 while Research Question 1b will be explored in Sect.  6 . Research Question 2, however, focuses on the development of technology for supporting collaboration. The answers to this question will yield an overview of design implications for the creation of groupware, which will be discussed in Sect.  8 .

3.1.2 Developing and executing the search strategy

The research questions listed above were used to identify keywords to use as search terms. For example, for the sub-question ‘ What factors can be attributed to distance ?’ the following keywords were selected: collaboration , distance , challenge ; in addition, synonyms and related words were also searched (e.g., geography, teamwork). This search can be described by the following boolean search query:

(collaboration OR teamwork OR CSCW) AND (challenge OR problem) AND (distance OR geography)

Our search methodology used multiple searches as terms were either exhausted or identified by collected papers. The generated search terms were used to conduct searches using Google Scholar since this search engine conducts a meta-search that returns results from several paper repositories (such as Science Direct, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and the ACM digital library). During the review, it became apparent that after the first 8–9 pages of results, we reached concept saturation. As a result, we limited our search to the first 10 pages for a total of 1200 potential sources.

In addition, collected papers were used to generate additional searches via a ‘snowballing’ effect [ 26 , 249 ]. Specifically, collected papers were used to generate additional keywords, identify additional papers through the bibliography, identify newer papers that cited them, and identify authors who had written important papers published in relevant conferences. These included papers published in the ACM conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) and the ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP). These authors were searched for using the identified search engines, and all their papers were evaluated for inclusion. In addition, other researchers proposed sources that were used to boost paper extraction. These additional methods were used because prior work by Greehalgh and Peacock [ 91 ] found that less efficient methods like snowballing are likely to identify important sources that would otherwise be missed, since predefined protocol driven search strategies cannot solely be relied on.

3.1.3 Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The first ten pages of results from Google Scholar were reviewed since occasionally keywords resulted in a high amount of potential papers. All papers were reviewed from searches resulting in fewer than ten pages of results. As part of our search methodology, we utilized several inclusion and exclusion criteria to filter the collected papers from the potential papers found using the systematic search and snowballing. These inclusion and exclusion factors are listed in Table 1 . Figure 1 shows the number of identified papers that met the inclusion criteria across 5-year periods.

Distribution of cited papers across time

3.1.4 Paper categorization

To facilitate analysis, the papers identified as part of the LR, shown in Fig.  1 , were further categorized by study type and contribution. Tables  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 ,  7 and  8 in the “ Appendix ” contain each paper organized by these categories.

4 Factors affecting virtual teams

Virtual teams are affected by physical factors such as geographic distance, in addition to temporal and perceive distance, which are time-based and cognitive respectively. These factors are tightly coupled with social and emotional factors, including trust, motivation, and conflicts. Based on the papers in this literature review, we separate these factors into the categories of distance factors, (which include geographical (physical), temporal, and perceived distance) and contributing factors that are driven by distance (including the nature of the work, the presence or need for explicit management, and group composition). Each category correlates with a set of challenges that greatly affect virtual teams. Distance categories and their associated challenges are discussed in Sect.  5 to answer Research Question 1a: what factors specific to distance cause challenges that impact distance collaboration? Contributing factors are discussed later in Sect.  6 .

5 Distance factors

Distance can be categorized as being primarily geographical, temporal, or perceived. Each category correlates with a set of challenges that greatly affect virtual teams. Distance categories and their associated challenges are discussed in the following sections to answer Research Question 1a: what factors specific to distance cause challenges that impact distance collaboration?

5.1 Geographical distance

Geographical distance has been defined as a measurement of the amount of work needed for a worker to visit a collaborator at that collaborator’s place of work, rather than the physical distance between the two collaborators [ 2 ]. Thus, two physically distant locations could be considered geographically close if they have regular direct flights. Even a distance as small as 30 meters has been shown to have a profound influence on communication between collaborators [ 4 ].

Furthermore, geographical distance is well known to pose challenges for virtual teams [ 191 ]. Olson and Olson explored these challenges at length in 2000 [ 191 ] and 2006 [ 193 ]. Their first work compared remote and co-located work through an analysis of more than ten years of laboratory and field research examining synchronous collaborations [ 191 ]. The 2006 paper presented a follow-up study that synthesized other prior work [ 78 , 190 ] to expand their 2000 contribution [ 193 ]. Findings from both studies identified the following ten challenges that hinder distance work:

Awareness of colleagues and their context

Motivational sense of presence of others

Trust is more difficult to establish

The level of technical competence of the team members

The level of technical infrastructure

Nature of work

Explicit management

Common ground

The competitive/cooperative culture

Alignment of incentives and goals

Challenges 1–5 will be discussed in this section while Challenges 6–10 will be topics of interest later in Sect.  6 .

5.1.1 Motivation and awareness in distributed collaborations

The motivational sense of the presence of others has well established ‘social facilitation’ effects, particularly the observation that people tend to work harder when they are not alone [ 193 ]. However, these effects are harder to find and cultivate in remote work, which poses an additional challenge to collaboration. In a similar vein, the difficulties associated with maintaining awareness of collaborators’ work progress at remote locations without the ability to casually ‘look over their shoulder’ is a significant challenge to collaboration [ 193 ]. The cause of these problems is likely because co-located workers have more opportunities for casual encounters and unplanned conversations [ 144 ], which boosts awareness. Similarly, distance prevents the informal visual observations necessary for maintaining awareness [ 8 ]. This is important since workers use the presence of specific teammates in a shared space to guide their work and prefer to be aware of who is sharing their work space [ 71 ]. Furthermore, the inability of virtual team members to observe each other’s actual effort tends to lead to a greater reliance on perceptions and assumptions that could be both biased and erroneously negative [ 206 ]. In addition to this, in situations where disengagement is not apparent, virtual team’s reliance on technology to communicate allows team members to disengage from the team due to decreased social impact [ 16 ]. Isolation can have an effect as well—when members of a virtual team become more isolated, their contributions and participation with the team decrease [ 32 ].

The importance of awareness in collaboration is discussed at length by Dourish and Bellotti [ 62 ], who investigate awareness through a case study examining ShrEdit [ 171 ], a text editor that supports multiple users synchronously. In this paper, awareness is defined as ‘an understanding of the activities of others, which provides a context for your own activity’ [ 62 ]. Dourish and Bellotti further stipulate that this context is necessary for guaranteeing that each person’s contributions are compatible with the group’s collective activity and plays a critical role in assessing individual actions in accordance with the group’s goals and progress. This context further allows individuals to avoid duplication of work. Collaborative work is significantly delayed without such awareness [ 193 ]. Moreover, awareness is a mandatory requirement for coordinating group activities, independent of the domain [ 62 ].

Many computer-based technologies have been developed to assist distance workers in maintaining awareness of their collaborators. Research suggests that the adoption of tools that allow members of virtual teams about the timing of each other’s contributions and activities may improve team coordination and learning [ 18 ]. Systems that provide real-time visual feedback about the behaviors of team members can be used as tools to mitigate various sources of “process-loss” in teams (e.g., team effort) [ 89 ]. Some early systems (e.g., [ 17 , 81 , 160 ]) were designed to feature computer-integrated audiovisual links between locations that were perpetually open, the idea being that providing unrestricted face-to-face communication and a ‘media space’ would facilitate collaboration as though the workers were in the same physical space. Since then, a number of modern systems (e.g., [ 153 , 197 ]) have been developed. For example, Glikson et al. [ 89 ] developed an effort visualization tool that calculated effort based on the number of keystrokes that team members made in a task collaboration space. They found that the visualization tool increased team effort and improved performance in teams that had a low proportion of highly conscientious members [ 89 ]. This effect did not hold true for teams with a high proportion of highly conscientious members. See the work of [ 154 ] for a more comprehensive review of awareness-supporting technology.

The concept of awareness as a direction for research has been criticized. In 2002, Schmidt argued that the term awareness was ‘ambiguous and unsatisfactory (p. 2)’ due to its exceptionally wide range of diverse applications and tendency to be paired with an adjective (e.g., ‘passive awareness’ [ 62 ]) in an attempt to lend some specificity. Instead, Schmidt recommended that researchers pursue more explicit, ‘researchable questions (p. 10)’ rather than focus on the enigmatic concept of awareness. This is more than a call to change terminology, but rather a fundamental shift in the way that research in this area is approached. Despite this recommendation, the awareness approach is still a commonly explored area [ 7 , 134 ], indicating disagreement within the community that has yet to be resolved, presenting a research opportunity.

5.1.2 Establishing trust

Throughout the relevant studies canvassed in this paper, trust has been defined in a multitude of ways. Cummings and Bromily [ 53 ] define trust within a collaboration as the worker’s belief that their team (a) ‘makes a good-faith effort to behave in accordance with any commitments both explicit or implicit, (b) is honest in whatever negotiations preceded such commitments, and (c) does not take excessive advantage of another even when the opportunity is available’. Pinjani and Palvia [ 208 ], in contrast, have a simpler definition of trust as the ‘level of confidence exercised among team members,’ and Choi and Cho [ 42 ] describe interpersonal trustworthiness as characterized by ability, benevolence, integrity, and goal congruence. Trust in the business literature is described as a person’s psychological state which indicates the person’s expectation that their team member will not act in a self-interested manner at the expense of the person’s welfare, which increases readiness to accept vulnerability [ 44 ]. Cho redefines this as a person’s believe in the beneficial actions of another even with the other is given the opportunity to act in self-interest [ 41 ]. Along with this, De Jong et al defines trust as ‘a shared and aggregate perception of trust that team members have for each other’ [ 59 ]. Lastly, Meyerson et al. [ 174 ] describe a specific type of trust, known as ‘swift trust’, which occurs in temporary organizations. The commonalities among these definitions include a perception that trust involves the belief that a collaborator will act in a beneficent manner as opposed to self-interest, acts in good-faith to honor commitments.

According to prior work [ 23 , 42 ], trust is the key variable that is crucial for all aspects of collaboration This includes team effectiveness, since trust determines whether team members ask each other for help, share feedback, and discuss issues and conflicts [ 23 ]. Team trust has a significant effect on team performance [ 59 ] and can be considered the ‘glue’ that holds collaborations together [ 48 ]. In fact, building mutual trust and personal knowledge about collaborators is more important to a good collaboration than resolving technical issues [ 250 ]. Furthermore, trust is particularly important in virtual teams since interactions on computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies tend to be superficial (i.e., lacking contextual cues such as facial expressions and tone of voice) [ 38 , 155 , 267 ], impersonal, and less certain [ 155 ].

Trust is linked to positive aspects of collaboration. For example, commitment to the team and project is greatly influenced by trust [ 28 ]. Trust can also improve collaboration infrastructure [ 10 ] and is also crucial for the occurrence of normative actions [ 48 ]. Maurping and Agarwal [ 165 ] found that building trust early on in a virtual collaboration plays a critical role in developing adequate group functioning and the ability to manage social activities. In addition, virtual teams that develop trust early may notice information confirming the competence of their team members and may not notice contradicting evidence [ 273 ]. As a result of their early development of trust, members of these teams also gain the confidence to engage in normative actions that sustain both trust and later performance [ 48 ]. While some research has found that the relationship between early trust and performance is stronger in highly virtual teams than in less virtual teams [ 163 ], whether the performance actually improves is up for debate. Some prior work [ 128 ] reports positive effects of trust on performance while others report negligible or no effects [ 124 ]. That being said, trust has an affect on the perception of performance such that when trust is high in a collaboration, the team’s perception of its performance is higher [ 182 ].

Trust is more difficult to establish and maintain in geographically dispersed collaborations [ 170 , 193 , 220 ] for a variety of reasons including the lack of strong relationships common to co-located teams [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 123 ] difficulties having in-depth personal interactions due to the absence of nonverbal cues and difficulties inferring the intentions of others [ 67 ]. Trust is also dependent on frequency of interactions, which may be less in virtual teams [ 273 ]. Swift trust in virtual teams is particularly fragile due to the unexpected disruptions and differences across time, distance, organization, and culture in virtual teams [ 266 ]. Teams that interact virtually are considerably less likely to develop trust [ 216 ]. Furthermore, trust develops in a sequential approach in co-located tams but follows an ad-hoc, unpredictable approach in virtual teams [ 147 ].

This difficulty in establishing trust has profound effects on collaboration, (e.g., (1) corrosion of task coordination and cooperation [ 193 ], (2) decreased eagerness to communicate [ 101 ], (3) inability to systematically cope with unstructured tasks and uncertainty [ 123 ], (4) fewer members willing to take initiative [ 123 ], (5) lack of empathy for teammates [ 132 ], (6) lower amounts of feedback from collaborators [ 123 ]), and increased risk [ 218 ]. Additionally, several studies (e.g., [ 116 , 142 , 188 ]) showed that low trust caused by distance affected workers’ identification of themselves as belonging to a team spanning locations. These issues have detrimental effects on collaborations that can delay or even halt the progress of a project.

Lack of trust is most pronounced during the initial stage of the collaboration and tapers off throughout the course of the project [ 21 ], implying that there are mitigating factors for the effect of distance on trust. Taking social approaches, such as promoting social exchanges early on in the life of a project [ 123 ], or creating opportunities for casual, non-work-related interactions between collaborators [ 193 ], can improve trust. However, these types of informal interactions more commonly occur face-to-face [ 193 ]. Furthermore, [ 186 ] identified face-to-face communication as having an ‘irreplaceable’ role in building and repairing trust.

Face-to-face communication is not always possible in distance collaborations, which is why [ 20 ] investigated challenges associated with trust—particularly delayed trust (slowed rate of progress towards full cooperation) and fragile trust [susceptibility towards negative ‘opportunistic behavior (p. 1)’]—via an evaluation of four communication methods commonly used in distance collaborations: face-to-face, audiovisual (e.g., Skype [ 175 ], Google Hangouts [ 90 ], FaceTime [ 6 ]), audio (telephone), and text-based (email, [ 232 ]) tools. They found that the absence of body language, subtle voice inflections, facial expressions, etc. cause delays in workers’ decisions whether to trust a new collaborator and impede expression of their own trustworthiness. This finding agrees with Olson and Olson’s assertion that the presence of video when communicating helps in situations where workers are not familiar with each other [ 193 ]. The effect of stripping body language, subtle voice inflections, facial expressions, etc. from communication was clearly shown by the performance of people participating in a social dilemma game who relied on distance technology for communication—these collaborations markedly showed more fragile trust than those that communicated face-to-face. Textual communication was especially worse with regards to establishing and maintaining trust, although audiovisual and audio technologies did have some effect on delayed and fragile trust. It is unsurprising then that trust development is enhanced by facilitating an initial face-to-face meeting at the beginning of a team’s relationship [ 163 ]. Furthermore, the effectiveness, reliability, and usefulness of the CMC technology used by the virtual team affects trust [ 42 ]. The personal characteristics of team members (e.g., ability, integrity, competence, fairness, honesty, openness) and the level of autonomy in a team play an important part in establishing trust [ 42 ].

From these works, we see that not only does distance influence trust, but this effect can partially be attributed to the use of communication technology adopted by distance collaborations. This influence may be further affected by the manner in which communication technology is used, since irregular, unpredictable, and inequitable communication between collaborators hampers trust [ 123 ]. Thus, it is important for future research seeking to address trust in collaboration to consider communication methods, particularly since trust in collaboration is still a relevant issue [ 29 , 30 , 217 ].

5.1.3 Informal and face-to-face communication

Prior work has identified team communication as one of the fundamental challenges associated with virtuality [ 5 ]. Communication in virtual teams is a key predictor of various outcomes such as improved performance and increased commitment [ 76 ]. Often in co-located collaborations, informal communication (i.e., ‘coffee talk’ [ 57 ]) accounts for up to 75 minutes of a workday [ 102 ]. These crucial exchanges often occur after meetings or during unplanned encounters in the hallway [ 8 ] and have profound effects on collaboration. In contrast, communications in virtual teams are often more formal than in co-located settings and focus more on work-related issues [ 13 ]. This is as a result of limited opportunities for the informal and unintentional information exchanges that often happen in shared spaces such as the hallway, water cooler, or parking lot [ 13 ]. This in turn diminishes a virtual team’s ability to share knowledge [ 92 ]. Informal contact plays an important role in facilitating trust and critical task awareness [ 2 ]. Spontaneous, informal communication has been shown to foster the feeling of being a part of a cohesive team [ 11 , 102 , 132 ] and assist the provision of corrective feedback [ 8 ]. These types of informal encounters are particularly important for unstable, dynamic groups [ 2 ].

Informal communication is associated with face-to-face encounters [ 73 , 191 ], thus, face-to-face communication plays an important role in collaboration [ 64 ] and has been described as being ‘crucial’ [ 196 ] or ‘indispensable’ [ 11 ], particularly at the beginning of a project. Frequent face-to-face interactions enable collaboration in virtual teams [ 54 ] and is credited with the ability to dramatically boost the strength of work and social ties within the team [ 133 ], which promotes a worker’s sense of belonging to the team and awareness of group activities [ 2 ], as well as boosting mutual trust and understanding, which is critical for preventing conflicts [ 8 ]. In addition, face-to-face communication is associated with higher levels of consensus within groups, higher perceived quality, more communication, and greater efficiency in completing tasks [ 86 ]. For this reason, it is recommended by many authors that members of virtual teams meet face-to-face when possible, particularly during the initial launch [ 136 , 151 , 265 ], when a face-to-face meeting can create a lasting bridge across geographical, temporal, and socio-cultural distance [ 265 ]. (Socio-cultural distance will be discussed in further depth later in Sect.  6.4.2 ) It is unsurprising, then, that traveling for obtaining face-to-face contact is imperative for project success [ 116 ].

Opportunities for informal interactions are greatly reduced by geographic distance between collaborators [ 93 , 132 ]. As a result, remote collaborators are often excluded from spontaneous decisions that are made outside formal meetings [ 8 ]. This exclusion is partly as a result of the increased effort needed to reach out and contact a teammate [ 101 ], and likely partly due to the correlation between distance and diminished face-to-face communication [ 52 , 133 , 141 , 144 ]. Geographic barriers to face-to-face communication include an increase in cost and logistics [ 2 ] and the burdens of travel in terms of money and time [ 11 ].

It is no surprise, then, that virtual teams show a marked increase in online activity [ 191 , 213 ] and have a higher reliance on CMC technology [ 215 ]. computer-mediated communication technology refers to the use of computers for communication between individuals []. This technology includes audiovisual, audio, and text-based tools. Use of this technology comes with significant challenges. Synchronous technology (i.e., audio and audiovisual tools) requires that all parties be available at a particular time. Some research has shown that it may be difficult to ascertain a remote collaborator’s availability for a synchronous meeting [ 101 ] and electronic-communication dependence constrains informal, spontaneous interaction [ 61 ], while others argue that CMC is dynamic and can be used on an ad-hoc and as-needed basis with no need for scheduling, presenting fewer logistical challenges [ 234 ]. However, it is important to note that, like in the case of the telephone, initiating spontaneous communication could be perceived as intrusive [ 144 ]. In addition, audio technology ‘distorts’ verbal cues and removes visual cues [ 20 ]. Audiovisual technology is also known to mask both verbal and visual cues in addition to constraining the visual field [ 20 ]. CMC often lacks support for non-direct and nonverbal interactions (e.g., body language, facial expressions) which greatly hinders communication in geographically dispersed virtual teams [ 67 ] by making interactions more difficult [ 92 ]. Thus, the choice of CMC technology has a heavy influence on communication because each method offers a different capacity to convey verbal and nonverbal cues [ 178 ]. It is therefore recommended to use several types of CMC technologies either concurrently (e.g., face-to-face communication accompanied by documents; telephone conferencing with synchronous electronic conferencing) or consecutively (e.g., conveying information via e-mail first, followed by con verging over the phone) [ 60 ].

Virtual teams that rely on CMC in lieu of face-to-face communication are more likely to experience less positive affect and have a diminished affective commitment to their teams [ 126 ]. Furthermore, compared to face-to-face feedback, computer-mediated feedback reduces perceptions of fairness [ 3 ]. This lack of face-to-face contact results in virtual teams having a lower sense of cohesion and personal rapport between team members [ 263 ]. Members of virtual teams may also divide their attention between various tasks while simultaneously participating in teamwork interactions due to the asynchronous nature of communication media, resulting in a lack of investment in the tasks [ 163 ]. As a result, communication timeliness has a higher influence on performance in virtual teams [ 163 ]. Furthermore, virtual teams that rely on CMC technology (e.g., instant messaging) to supplement communication in the absence of face-to-face interactions may have difficulties in their decision-making processes [ 173 ].

However, overall, communication technologies (including text-based tools) take more time and effort to effectively communicate information and are missing important social information and nonverbal cues that help establish ties between collaborators [ 64 ]. This has important implications for situations where a high volume of communication is necessary. Due to the extra effort required to communicate through computer-mediated modalities (e.g., email), virtual teams must put in extra effort to manage high volumes of messages, which can hinder performance [ 163 ]. Furthermore, when teams use email for communication, it becomes difficult to determine whether the information contained within the email was understood in the absence of vocal and nonverbal cues [ 163 ]. To combat this, Marlow et al. [ 163 ] suggest using closed-loop communication to prevent misunderstandings by providing opportunities for clarification that would otherwise not accompany virtual communication. They argue that the use of closed-loop communication will enhance performance in virtual teams [ 163 ].

Since remote collaborations must rely on technology in lieu of face-to-face communication, the level of technical competence of the team members can pose an additional challenge [ 193 ]. Teams that are unable to adopt and integrate basic technology into their everyday workflow are unlikely to use more complicated and sophisticated collaboration technology (e.g., multi-pane videoconferencing) [ 191 ] that may better support visual and verbal cues, enriching distance communication. Furthermore, the level of technical infrastructure can also create collaboration challenges [ 193 ]. Technology for remote work fails without adequate technical support or resources. Reliability is also an issue with communication technology—new technology must be stable enough to ‘compete with the well-established reliability of the telephone’ [ 15 ].

There are some advantages to using commuter-mediated communication technology in virtual teams. For example, asynchronous technology (e.g., text-based tools) provide provide the ability to take one’s time when asking a question or crafting a response [ 144 , 261 ], which leads to efficient, focused conversations [ 77 , 144 ] that can be quicker than other forms of communication. CMC is also shown to increase participation among team members [ 212 ], facilitate unique ideas [ 86 , 212 ], and reduce the number of dominant members [ 212 ]. In a similar vein, Fjermestad [ 79 ] found that groups that relied on CMC experienced higher decision quality, depth of analysis, equality of participation, and satisfaction than groups that primarily met face to face. Finally, virtual teams that do not meet face to face may be better at adapting their conceptualization of a task in response to a team member completing a task in a novel manner [ 163 ]

Additional factors, such as experience with a task, interdependence, and the temporal stage of team development can impact team performance when relying on CMC technology. For example, when teams have experience with the task at hand, with each other, and with their communication method, there is less of a need for synchronous CMC technology (e.g., video conferencing) [ 60 ]. In contrast, when teams do not have this extensive experience, there is a greater need for synchronous CMC technology [ 60 ]. Organizational structure, levels of interdependence, and media richness (which ranges from face-to-face communication to simple documents) also influence the effectiveness of communication [ 140 ]. These factors vary depending on the communication method’s capacity for immediate feedback, ability to facilitate nonverbal cues, and level of personalization [ 140 ]. In addition to this, Maruping and Agarwal [ 165 ] found that matching the functionalities of the CMC technology to specific tasks will result in higher levels of effectiveness in virtual teams. Furthermore, stage at which a virtual team is at in their development will also affect communication [ 165 ]. Teams in their early stages of development should use CMC technologies that facilitate expression in order to mitigate relationship conflict [ 165 ]. Video-conferencing technologies are particularly suited for this situation being both synchronous and media rich [ 165 ].

From the identification of these challenges, we can clearly see that existing tools and infrastructures have limitations that are preventing communication technology from fully supporting informal interactions. Thus, we are left with a need for other methods that support informal communication in geographically dispersed collaborations.

5.1.4 Intra-team conflict

In Jehn et al.’s exploration of everyday conflict through qualitative investigation of six organizational work teams, intra-team conflict is categorized as being either affective (i.e., interpersonal), task-based, or process-based (i.e., relating to responsibilities and delegation of workers for tasks) [ 125 ]. All three types of conflict have been investigated within the context of geographically distributed versus co-located teams, with mixed results. Several researchers have concluded that geographically distributed teams experience higher levels of conflict [ 8 , 46 , 103 , 108 , 188 , 261 ]. In particular, geographically distributed teams are more susceptible to interpersonal [ 108 ] and task-based conflict [ 108 , 179 ]. There is some evidence that conflict has a more ‘extreme’ [ 107 , 159 ] or ‘detrimental’ [ 179 ] effect on distributed teams as opposed to co-located ones. This effect can likely be attributed to the evidence that conflict in distributed teams is known to escalate and often remains unidentified and unaddressed for long periods of time [ 8 ]. As a result of reliance on computer-mediated communication, virtual teams featuring high geographical dispersion have higher perceptions of unfairness, which also leads to internal conflict [ 244 ].

One pervasive issue is the development of geographically based subgroups within a collaboration that provoke us-versus-them attitudes [ 8 , 46 ]. Armstrong and Cole observed that the word ‘we’ was often used to refer to co-located workers, regardless of which group the workers were assigned [ 8 ]. In another case, a team of international collaborators spread across four sites ‘fought among themselves as if they were enemies’. Interviews exposed that the team was actually comprised of four groups under one manager and did not act or feel like one cohesive team [ 8 ]. These conflicts are similar to those associated with communicating at a distance. Conflicts frequently occur as a consequence of assumptions and incorrectly interpreted communications [ 103 ]. Furthermore, missing information and miscommunications between geographically distant sites result in teammates making harsh attributions about their collaborators at other locations [ 46 ]. These types of intra-group conflicts can have important ramifications for distant collaborations. Us-versus-them attitudes often lead to limited information flow, which in turn leads to reduced cohesion and faulty attributions [ 46 ]. Moreover, intra-team conflict causes problems that result in delays in work progress [ 8 ] and resolution of work issues [ 103 ].

Researchers have identified several things that can mitigate conflict in virtual teams. Both shared context [ 108 ] and a shared sense of team identity have a moderating effect on conflict [ 108 , 179 ], particularly task and affective conflict [ 108 , 179 ]. Familiarity, in addition, has been shown to reduce conflict [ 107 ]. Spontaneous communication—which, as previously discussed, is primarily achieved face-to-face—has been demonstrated to mitigate conflict in virtual teams, particularly due to its role in facilitating the identification and handling of conflict [ 108 ]. There are also more instances of task conflict in teams that rely heavily on communication technology [ 179 ]. Specific types of conflict can be managed through different forms of computer-mediated communication technology. Task related conflict, for example, is best managed through synchronous communication technologies such as video-conferencing [ 165 ]. Conflict related to processes can be effectively handled using asynchronous communication technologies that also document the team’s agreements regarding tasks and responsibilities [ 165 ]. In this case, immediate feedback is not as necessary [ 165 ].

Although the above work has come to an agreement as to whether geographic distance has a negative effect on conflict, contradictions do exist in the literature. In particular, Mortensen and Hinds’ [ 179 ] examination of 24 product development teams found no significant difference in affective and task-based conflict between co-located and distributed teams, which is in direct conflict with their later work [ 108 ]. This discrepancy is particularly interesting given that the participants in both studies did research and product development, and are therefore comparable. Thus, it is uncertain as to which conclusion is accurate, presenting an open question.

5.2 Temporal distance

Temporal distance is distinctly different than geographical distance and should be treated as a separate dimension [ 49 ]. While geographical distance measures the amount of work needed for one collaborator to visit another at that collaborator’s place of work, temporal distance is considered to be a directional measurement of the temporal displacement experienced by two collaborators who want to interact with each other [ 2 ]. Temporal distance can be caused by both time shifts in work patterns and differences in time zones [ 219 ]. In fact, time zone differences and time shifts in work patterns can be manipulated to either decrease or increase temporal distance [ 2 ]. It can be argued that temporal distance is more influential than geographic distance [ 75 , 213 , 243 , 250 ] due to the challenges it poses on coordination [ 49 , 74 , 75 , 141 , 183 , 213 , 243 ].

One key disadvantage to high temporal distance is the reduced number of overlapping work hours between collaboration sites [ 11 , 33 , 132 ]. Although in an ideal situation, having team members dispersed across time zones can allow continual progress on a project as each team member works within their respective workdays [ 256 ], this isn’t always the case. In fact, temporal distance can lead to incompatible schedules that result in project delays and can only be overcome with careful planning [ 230 ]. Fewer overlapping work hours results in communication breakdowns, such as an increased need for rework and clarifications, and difficulties adjusting to new problems [ 73 , 74 ]. Additionally, reduced overlap in work hours results in coordination delays [ 49 ]. For example, a distant teammate may not be available when their expertise is needed [ 2 ]. In some cases, this unavailability causes the collaborator in need of help to make assumptions based on local culture and preferences in order to reach an immediate resolution of issues—which can cause rework when these assumptions are incorrect [ 250 ]. The issue of the lack of overlapping work hours also causes problems with synchronization; synchronous communication is often significantly limited in temporally dispersed collaborations, which can delay vital feedback [ 2 ] and increase response time [ 219 ]. In fact, scheduling global meetings can be virtually impossible for this reason [ 250 ]. Furthermore, as with geographic distance, temporal distance decreases the number of opportunities for informal communication [ 93 , 132 ] since the window in which all collaborators are available is small.

Communication can be disrupted by temporal distance in other ways. Bjørn and Ngwenyama found that in some virtual teams, communication would become limited to temporally co-located teammates because it was easier, bypassing teammates at other sites who should have been included [ 14 ]. This invisible communication would result in collaborators feeling left out of key decisions, which had toxic effects on the project. This effect is especially unfortunate given that temporal distance makes repairing the consequences of misunderstandings and reworking portions of the project more costly [ 73 ].

In addition to these issues, temporally dispersed collaborations are often plagued by delays, while co-located collaborations are considered more efficient [ 19 ]. Coordination delay increases with temporal distance—delay between collaborators located in the same city was smaller than that for collaborators in different cities, which was smaller than the delay found in collaborators located in different countries [ 49 ]. Delays in responses from collaborators can be especially frustrating and problematic [ 116 ] and can lengthen the amount of time required to resolve issues [ 19 ], sometimes dragging problems out across multiple days [ 120 , 132 ]. When work is organized such that a team member’s contribution is dependent upon a task completed by a team member in an earlier time zone, a failure to complete the earlier task can result in the loss of an entire workday [ 250 ]. Thus, timely completion of tasks in temporally dispersed collaborations is crucial [ 250 ]. Coordination delays are also shown to cause additional problems, particularly decreased performance in terms of meeting key requirements, staying within the budget, and completing work on time [ 49 ].

There are several social approaches to mitigating these issues. For example, collaborators can cultivate flexible work schedules [ 116 ], often by modifying a ‘typical’ workday by working either extremely early in the morning or very late at night so that there are overlapping work hours [ 250 ]. In contrast, Holmstrom et al. found that both Hewlett Packard (HP) and Fidelity employed a ‘follow-the-sun’ concept where work is handed off at the end of the day in one time-zone to workers beginning their day in another [ 116 ]. Follow-the-sun methodologies, if used effectively, can result in efficient, 24/7 productivity since work can be completed by one team member during another’s off hours [ 2 , 93 , 103 ]. However, this technique requires additional oversight time to facilitate the transfer of work from one team to the other, including time to discuss arising issues [ 250 ]. A competing technique is to limit the number of time zones in which sites are located [ 116 ]. Additionally, some coordination issues can be mitigated by careful division of work which takes into account being separated by several time zones [ 49 ].

Technology also plays a key role in mitigating the effects of temporal distance. Asynchronous communication tools (e.g., email, fax [ 19 , 57 ]) allow collaborators to coordinate shared efforts across time and distance with the additional benefits of leaving a written communication history [ 31 ] that supports accountability and traceability [ 2 ]. However, using asynchronous tools is known to increase the amount of time that a collaborator has to wait for a response [ 2 ] and make temporal boundaries more difficult to overcome than spatial boundaries in instances where sites do not have overlap in their workdays [ 49 ]. Furthermore, the process of writing ideas in emails increases the risk of misunderstandings between collaborators [ 57 ] over talking in person or via the telephone. Finally, developers starting their workday may become overwhelmed by the number of asynchronous messages left during the previous night [ 19 ]. Given these drawbacks to current technology and the unlikelihood that global collaboration is going to stop, it is worthwhile to ask how can we better support communication in temporally distant work.

There is also some question as to whether coordination costs are higher in teams that are temporally distributed. Both Ågerfalk et al. [ 2 ] and Battin et al. [ 11 ] assert that temporal distance greatly increases the cost and effort of coordination due to the added difficulties of dividing work across multiple time zones. Espinosa and Carmel [ 73 ], however, state that temporal distance reduces coordination costs when team members are not working concurrently because no direct coordination takes place when the two teammates are not working at the same time [ 2 ]. Clearly, this discrepancy needs to be resolved.

5.3 Perceived distance

As previously discussed in Sects. 5.1 and 5.2 , distance is commonly conceptualized in terms of geography or time zones [ 4 ] (i.e., spatio-temporal distance). In contrast, perceived (a.k.a. subjective) distance is characterized by a person’s impression of how near or how far another person is [ 270 ]. These perceptions of proximity have both an affective and a cognitive component [ 189 ]. In this case, the cognitive component refers to a mental judgement of how near or distance a virtual teammate seems while the affective component is concerned with the idea that a person’s sense of perceived proximity is neither purely conscious or rational but is instead dependent on emotions [ 189 ]. Perceived distance is a distinctly different idea than spatio-temporal distance and one is not necessarily related to the other [ 215 ]. Rather, perceived distance is the “symbolic meaning” of proximity rather than physical proximity and is suggested to have a greater effect on relationship outcomes [ 189 ]. This symbolic meaning is defined by the teams sense of shared identity and their use of communication media, which is primarily synchronous [ 189 ]. In fact, as people interact strongly and frequently with other team members, they can create a sense of closeness independent of physical proximity [ 214 ]. For example, free and open source software developers often perceive high levels of proximity due to their strong and intense communication and “hacker” identities [ 214 ]. The concept of perceived distance is why collaborators may be geographically distant and yet feel as though they are proximally near [ 162 ]. Perceived proximity can have a profound influence on team interaction [ 34 , 82 , 189 ] For example, perceptions of proximity are known to influence decision making in virtual teams [ 198 ].

In 2014, Siebdrat et al. surveyed 678 product developers and team leaders in the software industry to investigate perceived distance and challenge the notion that geographic and temporal distance directly translates to perceived distance. They found that perceived distance was more strongly affected by a team’s national heterogeneity than by their spatio-temporal distance. Furthermore, Siebdrat et al. found that perceived distance had a significant effect on collaboration while spatio-temporal distance had no impact. As a result, they concluded that perceived distance is more indicative of collaboration challenges than spatio-temporal distance.

Findings from other work implies that distance can affect collaborators that are all in the same country at a single site [ 4 ], with low national heterogeneity and low spatio-temporal distance. It is uncertain whether this situation would still have high perceived distance given the limited work available. Therefore, there is a clear need for a better understanding of the relationship between perceived distance, spatio-temporal distance, and collaboration.

6 Contributing factors

In addition to the challenges associated with the three main types of distance discussed previously in this paper (i.e., geographic, temporal, and perceived distance), several contributing factors intersect with distance to cause additional challenges for virtual teams. To answer Question 1b (What other factors contribute to the factors and challenges that impact distance collaboration?), this paper will discuss these key factors, namely the nature of work, the need for explicit management, configuration, and diversity of workers in a collaboration.

6.1 Nature of work

Work can be categorized as either loosely or tightly coupled [ 191 ]. Tightly coupled work relies heavily on the skills of groups of workers with exceedingly interdependent components; this type of work necessitates frequent, rich communication and is usually non-routine. Loosely coupled work, in contrast, is typically either routine or has fewer dependencies than tightly coupled work. Interdependence between components, and thus tightly coupled work, is at the heart of collaboration [ 225 ]. In addition, complex tasks lead to higher trust and collaboration than simple tasks and task complexity is a critical factor that molds the interactions and relationships between team members [ 42 ]. Furthermore, interdependence is not merely an issue of sharing resources, but instead ‘being mutually dependent in work means that A relies positively on the quality and timeliness of B s’ work and vice versa and should primarily be conceived of as a positive, though by no means necessarily harmonious interdependence’ [ 225 ]. Marlow et al. [ 163 ] found that as interdependence increases, communication becomes increasingly critical. They therefore suggest that communication becomes increasingly important to promoting high levels of performance. In 1988, Strauss described the additional work necessary for collaborators to negotiate, organize, and align their cooperative (yet individual) activities that occur as a result of interdependence. In doing so, Strauss discusses the concept of articulation work—by his definition, work concerned with assembling tasks and adjusting larger groups of tasks (e.g., sub-projects and lines of work) as a part of managing workflow. Articulation work is further described as the additional work needed to handle the interdependencies in work between multiple collaborators [ 72 ].

Virtual teams face greater challenges when managing these dependencies as a result of distance, both spatial and temporal, and culture [ 72 ]. Because interdependent (i.e., tightly coupled) work requires a high amount of interaction and negotiation, it is very difficult to do at a distance [ 191 ]. In contrast, loosely coupled work does not require as much communication as tightly coupled work, and so is easier to complete in geographically distant collaborations. Thus, tightly coupled work in virtual teams leads to less successful projects [ 193 ]. This observation is important since most projects have both varieties of work [ 191 ].

To combat the challenges associated with relying on tightly coupled work, many organizations take a social approach that arranges for co-located team members to work on tightly coupled aspects of the project while distance workers tackle loosely coupled parts [ 64 , 193 ], facilitated by deconstructing tasks into smaller pieces [ 93 ]. For tightly coupled work, some organizations choose to use extreme [ 161 ] or radical [ 246 ] collaboration setups where teams work in an enclosed environment in order to maximize communication and facilitate the flow of information. In contrast, for loosely coupled work, some organizations choose to minimize interaction [ 104 ]. Creating rules and norms for communication between team members early in the team’s life cycle can also increase effective communication and therefore improve performance during complex tasks [ 262 ]. This is essential for managing highly complex tasks and avoiding misunderstandings that can arise as a result of high task complexity combined with high virtuality [ 163 ].

However, the idea that tightly coupled work challenges collaboration is contested by Bjørn et al. [ 15 ]. This case study is centered on a large research project investigating global software development with several geographically dispersed partners. This study also provides evidence that tightly coupled work resulted in stronger collaborations. They observed that tightly coupled work required collaborators to frequently interact to do their work and, as a result, forced these collaborators to know more about each other, help each other, and cultivate strong engagement despite being at geographically distant sites. In contrast, loosely coupled work did not require the same level of engagement, resulting in collaborators feeling more detached from the project. Thus, Bjørn et al. proposed that tightly coupled work in geographically distributed teams involves processes that help collaboration [ 15 ].

Complex, tightly coupled tasks may be more difficult to the reliance of virtual teams on virtual tools and tendency to disband after a task has been completed [ 12 ]. Furthermore, the combination of high task complexity and high levels of virtuality lends itself to misunderstandings and mistakes [ 163 ]. As a result, effective communication is more critical for high performance in virtual teams for these tasks [ 163 ]. Despite this, Marlow et al. suggest that virtual teams can successfully complete these tasks if team members cultivate shared cognition. Given the characteristics of CMC technologies like video conferencing, which preserve much of the nuances present in face-to-face communication, we posit that shared cognition can be developed through the frequent, consistent use of this medium for communication.

Given the contrast between the work suggesting that tightly coupled work hinders distance collaboration [ 72 , 191 , 193 ] and work by Bjørn et al. [ 15 ] that suggests the opposite, there is clearly room for further research on the subject. This is especially true since Bjørn et al. focused only on global software development, and thus their findings might not generalize to other types of collaboration.

6.2 Explicit management and leadership

One of the largest challenges faced by virtual teams is the management of team effort [ 207 ]. Explicit management is needed for distributed, collaborative work, particularly by leaders trained in project management, in order to ensure the success of a project [ 150 , 193 ]. Collaborative projects are considered difficult to manage, especially as the number of workers associated with the project increases. Leadership is challenging in geographically dispersed teams because effective leadership is highly dependent on quality interactions that are more difficult across distance [ 157 ]. For example, Hoch and Kozlowski [ 111 ] found that hierarchical leadership is less effective in geographically dispersed teams than in co-located teams. It is also more challenging to ensure that the team’s work is given priority by the team members in geographically dispersed teams [ 131 ]. Furthermore, distributed projects face even more obstacles, such as increased coordination problems [ 188 ] including identifying and overcoming cultural differences, ensuring that all team members are heard [ 193 ], and regulating the inter-dependencies between resources, task components, and personnel [ 158 ].

Virtual teams face challenges related to leadership, such as nourishing an environment that fosters creativity [ 96 ] and emergent leadership [ 35 ]. Effective leadership benefits geographically dispersed virtual teams in a multitude of ways, including helping virtual teams overcome many of the challenges caused by distance, including facilitating satisfaction and motivation [ 88 , 169 ]. Virtual leadership can help collaboration within the team through providing training, guidance, resources, coaching, and facilitating relationship building [ 150 ]. Furthermore, leadership in virtual teams can facilitate knowledge sharing and the building of shared mental models [ 150 ]. Mental models are defined by Johnson-Laird [ 126 ] as internal representations of knowledge that match the situation they represent and consist of both abstract concepts and perceptible objects and images. These mental models may reflect detailed information about how the task is to be performed (i.e., task-related team mental models) or information about team member’s roles, tendencies, expertise, and patterns of interaction (i.e., teamwork-related mental models) [ 226 ]. These benefits, in turn enhance virtual team effectiveness [ 150 ]. Task complexity can be a mitigating factor in the effectiveness of leadership. Leadership benefits the team more in an environment where tasks are highly interdependent and/or highly complex [ 150 ]. In addition to this, team members’ perceptions of their leaders’ use of communication tools and techniques can impact their perceptions of overall team performance [ 182 ]). In particular, positive perceptions of leadership communication results in positive perceptions of performance [ 182 ].

Leadership can have a strong influence on interpersonal team dynamics and trust as well. Prior work indicates that leaders play an important role in enhancing team performance by demonstrating empathy and understanding [ 131 ], monitoring and reducing tensions [ 260 ], and clearly articulating role and relationship expectations for team members [ 131 ]. Leaders in virtual teams have the capacity to prevent and resolve team relationship and task conflicts [ 150 ]. Furthermore, effective leadership can have a positive influence on affection, cognition, and motivation [ 150 ]. It is particularly important for leaders to bridge co-located and remote team members in order to promote team effectiveness [ 150 ]. Leaders can build trust within virtual teams by engaging in behaviors such as early face-to-face meetings, using rich communication channels, and facilitating synchronous information exchange [ 150 ]. High levels of consistent communication between leaders and team members is positively related to trust and engagement within virtual teams [ 80 ].

Individual leadership styles have their own impact on virtual team productivity. Prior work has focused on four key types of leadership: transformational, empowering, emergent, and shared. Transformational leadership is characterized by idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individual consideration, and intellectual stimulation [ 65 ]. This type of leadership enables followers to reach their potential and maximize performance [ 65 ]. However, transformational leadership, while effective in co-located or slightly dispersed teams, is less effective in improving the performance of highly geographically dispersed teams [ 69 ]. This may be due to the difficulties associated with facilitating communication across distance, which can cause the leader’s influence to have counterproductive effects [ 69 ]. In this case, the leader is likely to be “too far removed” to authentically want to make a difference [ 69 ]. In fact, a transformational leader’s influence on team communication decreases as the team becomes more and more dispersed [ 69 ].

Empowering leadership combines sharing power with individual team members while also providing a facilitative and supportive environment [ 236 ]. High empowering leadership has the effect of positively influencing team members’ situational judgement on their virtual collaboration behaviors and, ultimately, individual performance [ 105 ]. Moreover, empowering leadership has a positive effect on team performance at high levels of team geographic dispersion [ 105 ]. However, it is important to note that teams may miss out on the benefits provided by empowering leadership if they lack situational judgement [ 105 ]

Emergent leaders are people who exert significant influence over other members of a team, even though they may not be vested with formal authority [ 227 ]. Emergent leadership has a positive relationship with virtual team performance [ 110 ]. In particular, emergent leadership has positive relationships with team agreeableness, openness to experience at the individual team member level, and emotional stability [ 110 ]. In addition, emergent leadership has a positive relationship to individual conscientiousness, which is associated with being careful, responsible, and organized [ 110 ]. These all have positive influences on virtual team performance [ 110 ].

Shared leadership is a collective leadership processing featuring multiple team members participating in team leadership functions [ 110 ]. This form of leadership can be described as a “mutual influence process” where members of a team lead each other towards the accomplishment of goals [ 109 ]. Shared leadership has a positive influence on the performance of virtual teams [ 110 , 150 ]. The structural support provided by shared leadership can supplement traditional leadership; in this situation, shared leaders assume the responsibility of building trust and relationships among team members [ 150 ]. Shared leadership provides many benefits to virtual teams such as emotional stability, agreeableness, mediating effects on the relationship between personality composition and team performance [ 110 ]. Shared and emergent leadership styles share some effects on virtual teams. Specifically, these types of leadership will affect the relationships between team conscientiousness, emotional stability, and team openness such that they will be stronger in teams with higher levels of virtuality than in teams with lower levels of virtuality [ 110 ]. However, shared leadership is facilitated by the socially-related exchange of information that creates commitment, trust, and cohesion among team members [ 110 ]. In co-located teams, this exchange of knowledge is enabled through social interactions like informal conversations, socializing outside of work, and through meetings [ 110 ]. However, this type of informal and face-to-face communication is less common and feasible in virtual teams for reasons that will be discussed later. As a result, it is necessary for organizations to make efforts to facilitate shared leadership through training [ 110 ].

In addition to leadership style, the level of authority differentiation and skill level of the team members have an affect on team-level outcomes. Among teams with less skilled members, centralized authority (i.e., high authority differentiation) will have a positive influence on efficiency and performance in virtual teams [ 223 ]. In contrast, centralized authority has a negative influence on team innovation, learning, adaption, and performance as well as member satisfaction and identification among teams with highly skilled members [ 223 ]. Decentralized authority (i.e., low authority differentiation) when combined with careful intervention of a formal or informal leader can benefit coordination, learning, and adaptation in virtual teams with high skill differentiation and high temporal stability [ 150 ].

Other studies showed that virtual teams face challenges that could be mitigated with explicit management [ 83 , 188 , 243 , 261 ]. O’Leary and Mortensen investigated the effects of configuration (i.e., the distribution of team members across multiple sites) on team dynamics at the individual, subgroup, and team level [ 188 ]. They found that geographically defined subgroups led to significantly negative outcomes with regards to coordination problems (e.g., difficulties with coordination-related decisions about schedules, deadlines, and task assignments). The effects of configuration on distance work will be discussed further in this section. Similarly, problems of coordination (e.g., ‘reaching decisions’ and ‘division of labor”) were significantly increased by distance [ 261 ]. These results are complemented by findings that distance hampers the coordination of virtual teams via synchronous meetings [ 243 ]. Similarly, coordination in distance collaborations is hindered by difficulties in scheduling synchronous meetings due to limited windows of time where all parties are able to be present [ 83 ]. These findings complement those of Sect.  5.2 discussing the effect of temporal distance on collaboration.

Prior work has suggested various strategies for effective leadership and explicit management. For example, Hill and Bartol [ 105 ] suggest team training that focuses on strategies for overcoming challenges encountered in dispersed teamwork. Another, related, strategy is to focus more attention on setting norms for behavior that may aid appropriate situational judgment among team members when launching geographically dispersed teams [ 105 ]. A different approach is to consider personality dimensions such as agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, emotion stability, and moderate extroversion, which all have positive influences on team performance, when selecting virtual team members [ 110 ].

However, some types of collaborations, particularly research collaborations consisting mainly of scientists, avoid the application of explicit management in their projects [ 193 ]. There is an opportunity for research to investigate how to support explicit management in distance collaborations that typically reject this type of administration.

6.3 Configuration

Like O’Leary et al. [ 188 ], in this paper, configuration is subdivided into three dimensions: site, imbalance, and isolation. Site dispersion is best characterized as the degree to which collaborators are at distinct geographic locations [ 187 ]. There is an inverse relationship between the number of sites and project success [ 50 , 51 , 133 ]. High site dispersion is associated with higher amounts of faultlines (i.e., theoretical divisions within a group that create subgroups) which damage team collaboration [ 47 , 210 ]. Specifically, faultlines escalate polarization, subgrouping, and the effect of causing collaborators in other locations to feel more distant [ 47 ]. Having a large number of sites, in particular, increases the odds that differences in demographics will create these divisions [ 47 ]. Additionally, greater numbers of sites predict fewer coordination activities and decreased outcomes [ 133 ]. Knowledge sharing decreases [ 40 , 83 ] and the cost of managing team goals increases [ 97 ] as the number of sites increases.

Imbalance refers to the proportion of collaborators dispersed across a set of sites and can have negative effects on collaboration, such as conflicts between large and small sites [ 8 ]. For example, imbalanced teams often have unequal amounts of contribution towards shared team tasks [ 188 ]. Furthermore, levels of conflict and trust differ between imbalanced and balanced teams [ 188 , 210 ]. In particular, larger subgroups in imbalanced teams feel stronger effects from faultlines on conflict and trust [ 210 ]. However, it is unclear what the ramifications are of these differences in trust and conflict [ 188 , 210 ], presenting an opportunity for research.

Imbalanced teams consisting of one isolated collaborator working with a co-located team function differently than highly dispersed, balanced teams [ 188 ]. For instance, communication in these imbalanced teams is different because the co-located team members communicate both face-to-face and electronically with each other, but, in the absence of travel, only communicate electronically with the isolated team member [ 231 ]. This disparity in communication methods impedes informal interaction and spontaneous communication [ 45 ]. This also has a unique effect on communication where the co-located team feels compelled to communicate with those isolated collaborators more frequently to make up for this difference [ 188 ]. Also, isolated members tend to contribute more frequently than their co-located counterparts because they feel as though they need to ‘speak up’ and be ‘heard’ over the co-located team [ 141 , 188 ].

Furthermore, isolation negatively affects a worker’s awareness of collaborator’s activities [ 187 ]. Isolated workers are also more likely to feel the effects of a lack of motivational sense of the presence of others [ 193 ]. These isolated workers identify less with the team and feel less like they are part of the group, leading to a feeling of distance from the rest of the team [ 45 ], which translates to feeling differently about group processes and outcomes [ 27 ]. Furthermore, isolation and feelings of alienation can have a negative effect on relationships among workers in geographically dispersed virtual teams, increasing the likelihood of feeling discomfort and reducing the likelihood of trusting team members that they do not know well [ 67 ].

Configurationally imbalanced teams (i.e., teams that have an uneven distribution of members across sites) tend to have lower identification with teammates and higher levels of conflict [ 188 ]. Conflict can be reduced by a shared sense of team identity [ 108 , 179 ], meaning that fostering this sense of identification with the team can mitigate both problems. Since team identification can be built via face-to-face communication [ 54 ]; we posit that in the absence of face-to-face communication, imbalanced teams should make use of CMC technologies that facilitate nuanced expression, such as video conferencing tools.

6.4 Group composition

The diversity of a team encompasses several factors that correlate with a set of challenges that greatly affect virtual teams. This section will focus on the issues of common ground, socio-cultural distance, and work culture. In the process, this section will discuss the remaining challenges identified by Olson and Olson [ 191 , 193 ], (continued from Sect.  5 ): common ground, the competitive/cooperative culture, and alignment of incentives and goals.

6.4.1 Common ground

Distance collaboration becomes easier if team members have common ground (i.e., have worked together before [ 54 ], have shared past experiences [ 54 ], vocabulary [ 191 ], or mental models [ 168 ] etc.) since it allows them to communicate via technology without requiring frequent clarification [ 193 ]. This challenge is also referred to as the ‘mutual knowledge problem’ [ 46 ]. The concept of mutual knowledge between teammates is based on the idea of ‘grounding’ in communication [ 43 ], which is done by both communicating and confirming understanding using words or body language [ 43 ]. Schmidtke and Cummings [ 226 ] found that as virtualness increases in a team, mental models become more complex, which negatively affects teamwork. They also found that as virtualness increases, similarity and accuracy of mental models decreases [ 226 ]. Accuracy and similarity play vital roles in reducing the negative effect of complexity on teamwork behaviors [ 226 ]. Fortunately, specialized training can increase mental model accuracy [ 226 ].

As virtual teams rely more on computer mediated communication, temporal stability (i.e. “the degree to which team members have a history of working together in the past and an expectation of working together in the future” [ 115 ]) more strongly influences teamwork [ 223 ]. High temporal stability is associated with positive team outcomes related to related to adaptation, learning, innovation, and performance, as well as satisfaction and identification with the team [ 223 ]. In addition to this, the extent to which virtual team members share common goals is critical in determining the success of the team [ 42 , 230 ]. For this reason, team leaders should ensure that team members commit to the task and common goals [ 10 ].

Research [ 168 ] has shown that it is more difficult for virtual teams that are geographically dispersed to develop a shared mental model. In particular, the process of grounding is made more difficult when there is a higher risk of misinterpretation, such as in the presence of multiple cultural practices and languages [ 191 ].The significant amount of time required to establish common conceptual frameworks and personal relationships can pose a significant constraint on collaboration in virtual teams [ 54 ].

The consequences of lack of common ground are primarily difficulty building trust [ 123 , 202 , 273 ] and difficulties associated with communication. Lack of common ground can limit the ability to communicate about and retain contextual information about teammates located at other sites, including their teammates situation and constraints, especially as the number of sites increases, in turn hindering their collaborative interactions and performance [ 46 , 230 ]. This contextual information includes, but is not limited to, local holidays and customs, site-specific processes and standards, competing responsibilities, and pressure from supervisors and teammates [ 46 ]. Common ground is also necessary to understand which messages or parts of messages are the most salient, which is particularly problematic because there may be restricted feedback [ 46 ]. The lack of common ground can also create problems interpreting the meaning of silence, which makes it difficult to know when a decision has been made [ 46 ]. Furthermore, lack of common ground can result in an uneven distribution of information and differences in speed of access to that information, which causes teammates at different sites to have different information and creates misunderstandings that are nontrivial to rectify [ 46 ].

Thus, the establishment of common ground is of utmost importance to virtual teams.

6.4.2 Socio-cultural distance

Socio-cultural distance has been defined as a measurement of a team member’s perception of their teammate’s values and usual practices [ 2 ]. This concept encompasses national culture and language, politics, and the motivations and work values of an individual [ 2 ]. It is known that geographically distributed collaborations are more socio-culturally diverse than co-located ones [ 179 ] because distance typically increases demographic heterogeneity (especially racial or ethnic heterogeneity) [ 107 ]. Members of a virtual team with different cultural backgrounds are likely to have different behaviors within the teams, including how they interact with their teammates [ 123 ]. For this and other reasons, virtual team’s cultural composition is the key predictor of the team’s performance [ 242 ].

Cultural differences go beyond national differences. There is a tendency for researchers studying cross-cultural organizational behavior to focus on national issues or use nation as a substitute for cultural values [ 245 ]. However, nation is not the only meaningful source of culture [ 84 , 149 ]. In addition to this, there may be multiple subcultures within a nation and the national culture may not be completely shared [ 135 ]. In fact, variation of cultural values within a country may be higher than variation between countries [ 114 ]. Therefore, a virtual team with high national diversity may not necessarily be culturally diverse [ 86 ].

Prior research has identified three levels of diversity: surface-level, deep-level, and functional-level [ 99 , 177 ]. Surface-level diversity is primarily observable differences such as race, age, and sex, while deep-level diversity is comprised of more subtle differences in personal characteristics such as attitudes, beliefs, and values, which are communicated through interaction between team members and information gathering [ 177 ]. Functional-level diversity, in contrast, refers to the degree to which team members have vary in knowledge, information, expertise, and skills [ 10 ].

The individualism-collectivism dichotomy is a ‘major dimension of cultural variability’ [ 112 ] that contributes to high socio-cultural distance. Socio-cultural distance is associated with higher levels of conflict as well as lower levels of satisfaction and cohesion [ 238 ] and has a profound impact on team performance [ 70 ]. Hardin et al. [ 98 ] found that the individualistic-collectivist dichotomy results in some cultures being more open to working in geographically dispersed environments due to their levels of self-efficacy beliefs about virtual teamwork.

Collectivist cultures place the needs, beliefs, and goals of the team over the those of an individual [ 94 , 112 ]. Virtual teams characterized by collectivist culture are less likely to use CMC technologies [ 143 ]. When they do choose to adopt CMC technologies, collectivist teams tend to choose synchronous methods that provide high relationship-related informational value [ 143 ]. Informational value in this context refers to the extent to which CMC technologies convey information benefits team effectiveness [ 143 ]. Virtual teams that favor in-group members and accept perceptions of inequality are said to be characterized by “vertical collectivism” [ 254 ]. These teams are less likely to rely on CMC technologies, and are more likely to accept varying forms of informational value [ 143 ]. They are also more likely to employ asynchronous methods [ 143 ]. In contrast, teams that perceive equality amongst team members regardless of their role within the organization experience “horizontal collectivism” [ 253 ]. In this case, members of the team view themselves as being part of a collective and treat all team members as equal. [ 253 ]. While these teams are also likely to limit reliance on CMC technologies, they tend to require higher informational values and prefer synchronous methods [ 143 ].

In contrast to collectivist cultures, individualist cultures place the needs, beliefs, and goals of the individual over the those of an team [ 112 ]. Virtual teams with high levels of individualism are more likely to use CMC technologies, especially those that are high in task-related informational value, and tend to work asynchronously [ 143 ] Furthermore, team members from individualist cultures tend to communicate more openly and precisely [ 112 , 113 ] and are more willing to respond to ‘ambiguous messages’ [ 94 ], which is considered to be an indicator of trust [ 203 ]. This observation indicates that team members from individualistic cultures may be more ready to trust other teammates when communicating via technology than team members from collectivist cultures [ 123 ]. Thus, the issues and recommendations regarding technology and trust are applicable.

Teams with members that prioritize their own intrinsic and extrinsic goals while also favoring status differences are said to be “vertically individualistic” [ 156 ]. These teams are characterized by competitive members that are motivated to “win” [ 156 ]. In addition, while these individuals tend to belong to more in-groups than collectivists, they are not very emotionally connected to these groups [ 181 ]. Virtual teams with high levels of vertical individualism are more likely to adopt CMC technologies, tolerate varying forms of informational value, and will use asynchronous methods when required by superiors than teams characterized by horizontal individualism or any type of collectivism [ 143 ]. Team members with horizontal individualistic orientation prioritize their own self-interest while also viewing their teammates as equals [ 143 ]. Virtual teams with high levels of horizontal individualism are more likely to adopt CMC technologies, tend to require higher informational value, and will use synchronous methods when required by superiors as opposed to teams characterized by vertical individualism or any type of collectivism [ 143 ].

Socio-cultural diversity can also be characterized by the temporal orientation of their goals. Teams that focus upon the future and are willing to delay success or gratification for the purposes of future gain have a “long-term orientation” culture [ 143 ]. Cultures with long-term orientation tend to value perseverance, persistence, and focus on future-oriented goals [ 143 ]. In contrast, cultures characterized by “short-term orientation” are focused on the immediate needs of their teams with little consideration of the impact of their decisions on the future [ 143 ]. Virtual teams defined by long-term orientation are more likely to adopt asynchronous tools with high informational value and tend to be slower to rely on CMC technologies than short-term orientated teams, which prefer synchronous tools with low informational value [ 143 ].

Cultures can also be characterized by the amount of contextualizing is performed by an individual during communication [ 95 ]. For example, Japan, a high-context culture, relies more on the use of indirect communication via contextual cues (e.g., body language) to convey information [ 139 ]. Contextualization also affects choice of CMC technologies. High-context teams tend not to rely on CMC technologies and will prefer tools that high high informational value [ 143 ]. Low-context teams, in contrast, will rely on CMC technologies and will prefer those with low informational value [ 143 ].

Virtual teams are also affected by the levels of affectiveness/neutrality present in their culture. Affectiveness in this context refers to the amount of emotion that individuals usually express when they communicate [ 143 ]. For example, individuals from affective cultures such as Italy commonly exhibit their emotions publicly. [ 143 ]. In addition, individuals from affective cultures often feel that more neutral cultures (e.g., Japan) are more intentionally deceitful because they tend to hold back on their emotions [ 240 ]. Affective teams will be less likely to rely on CMC technologies and will prefer ones with high informational value [ 143 ]. In contrast, teams with neutral cultures will highly rely on CMC technologies and will prefer tools with low informational value [ 143 ].

Other types of socio-cultural diversity influence the performance of virtual team. For example, heterogeneity in the extent to which gender roles are traditional is positively related to team performance [ 70 ]. In a similar vein, heterogeneity in the extent to which there is discomfort with the unknown has a positive effect on issue-based conflict [ 70 ]. Uncertainty avoidance also affects tool use in virtual teams. Teams that have high amounts of uncertainty avoidance are more likely to use a synchronous CMC technology with high informational value. In contrast, teams with low uncertainty avoidance are unlikely to have a preference [ 143 ]. In addition to this, the degree of inequality that exists among members of virtual teams has an affect on the tools chosen for communication [ 143 ]. Teams with a high degree of inequality (i.e., high power distance) are more likely to use synchronous tools while teams with a low degree of inequality (i.g., low power distance) will prefer asynchronous tools [ 143 ]. Specificity also plays a role in virtual team performance. Someone from a specific culture (e.g., the United Kingdom) is more likely to view their coworkers as people with whom they only have a business relationship with, [ 87 ]. In contrast, more diffuse cultures (e.g., China) are more likely to view their teammates as friends and include them in their social lives [ 143 ]. This affects the choice communication methods employed by the team as teams characterized by high specificity are more likely to rely on CMC technologies than diffuse teams [ 143 ].

High socio-cultural distance is the cause of several types of collaboration problems. For example, high socio-cultural distance reduces communication and increases risk [ 2 ] caused by relationship breakdowns between distributed teams [ 250 ] and results in more processes challenges and lower team performance [ 86 ]. Socio-cultural distance also tends to worsen the way leaders sense, interpret, and respond to problems [ 271 ]. Cultural heterogeneity also tends to result in divergent subgroup identification [ 68 ] that may subsequently have a negative effect on team interactions and performance [ 67 ]. Furthermore, in accordance with similarity/attraction theory, team members attribute positive traits to team members that they believe are similar to themselves and prefer to interact with them [ 216 , 255 ]. Negative traits are thus associated with teammates that they believe are dissimilar from them and sometimes actively avoid interactions with those teammates [ 24 ]. As a result, the belief that others are different in terms of education, race, and attitudes (i.e., perceived diversity) is frequently associated with the negative consequences of team heterogeneity [ 100 ], such as unwillingness to cooperate and coordinate activities [ 56 , 117 , 148 ].

Furthermore, teams with high socio-cultural distance are more likely to have issues with integration and communication and have more conflict [ 269 ]. Both task and affective conflict are increased as a result of the differences in perspectives and approaches related to work, which further exacerbates differences in expectations, attitudes, and beliefs [ 195 , 204 ]. These differences in belief structures are particularly common in heterogeneous groups (i.e., groups with high socio-cultural distance) [ 268 ] which, in turn, increases conflict due to differences in interpretations and opinions of work processes [ 205 ]. Thus, there is a vicious cycle between differences in belief and intra-group conflict that is detrimental to collaboration.

The most commonly experienced problems correlating with socio-cultural distance are difficulties associated with diversity in language preferences, proficiency, and interpretation, which can create barriers for many projects [ 116 ], such as requiring increased effort [ 74 , 170 , 183 ]. This challenge is not just a matter of different languages, even native speakers of one language may have problems because of differences in dialects and local accents [ 33 ]. In many global collaborations, some (if not all) of the collaborators only speak English as a second language [ 132 , 219 ]. This situation causes problems when collaborators need to synchronously communicate via teleconferencing—these team members can become overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the conversation [ 132 , 219 ]. Furthermore, this language-based disadvantage can cause non-native speakers of the dominant language to feel alienated and as though they have a disadvantage when speaking [ 219 ]. Prior work has also shown that virtual teams whose members have different first languages have more conflict and lower levels of satisfaction and cohesion [ 238 ].

Misunderstandings can occur even in cases where all collaborators are fluent in a language if there are other differences in culture—a seemingly harmless joke could have a massively detrimental impact on the success of a project if it is misunderstood as an insult [ 250 ]. Olson and Olson observed one such misunderstanding where team members in the United States ended a video conference without expressing a ‘proper farewell’ to a European teammate [ 191 ]. In this case, the curtness was due to pressure on the American team, who were unaware of the cultural expectations regarding farewells, to cut costs by conducting short video conferences [ 191 ]. The European team, however, was unaware of this pressure and perceived the lack of a proper farewell as an insult [ 191 ]. Also, conflicts can arise when teammates from a culture where saying ‘no’ is considered impolite (even when saying ‘yes’ is a problematic answer) interact with teammates who do not share this compunction [ 116 ]. Treinen and Miller-Frost encountered an instance where collaborators from one culture did not ask many questions of their teammates and instead affirmed that they had a clear understanding of requirements, but were in reality too polite to express concerns [ 250 ]. In this situation, the other collaborators were unaware of this cultural difference and did not realize that their questions should not have formulated as ‘yes or no,’ but rather should have elicited responses that indicated understanding.

Other types of socio-cultural differences such as those caused by religion, generation, and doing orientation, can also affect virtual team success. Religious differences, for example, can make it difficult for team members to understand each others norms and traditions, which has a negative influence on collaboration [ 221 ]. Generational differences can affect how a team member responds to collaborating via CMC technology because not every has the high levels of technical expertise that makes them a “digital native” [ 129 ]. Finally, differences in the extent to which work is valued as a central life interest (i.e., “doing orientation”) is negatively linked to productivity [ 135 ]. However, differences in the extent to which team members have a sense of personal control over their work and life events are positively linked to team productivity, cooperation, and empowerment [ 135 ].

A review of literature reviews and meta-analyses suggests that the “main-effects” approach, where researchers focus on relationships between outcomes and diversity dimensions, ignoring moderating variables, cannot truly account for the effects of diversity [ 86 ]. The effect of socio-cultural diversity depends on other features of the team [ 272 ], such as how long members have interacted, the types of diversity investigated, and the types of outcomes under scrutiny [ 86 ]. High task complexity, high tenure, large team size, and low levels of geographic dispersion are found to moderate the effects of socio-cultural diversity on virtual teams [ 237 ]. Experience with CMC technology can also moderate socio-cultural diversity; high heterogeneity in technical experience heightens the negative effect that differences in nationality has on creativity [ 164 ]. Socio-economic variables (e.g., human development index (HDI)) has a significant impact on a country’s scientific production and collaboration patterns [ 118 , 152 , 199 ]. Kramer et al. found that socioeconomic similarities and economic agreements between countries have contributed to increased collaboration in the scientific field [ 143 ], which is likely to be virtual. The phase in which a virtual team is at in the project life-cycle affects assessment of team performance in culturally diverse teams. Culturally heterogeneous virtual teams will outperform culturally homogeneous teams during the later part of the project life-cycle [ 264 ]. This is likely a result of teams becoming more homogeneous over time as shared team values, associated norms, and identity enables the team to overcome process challenges that occur when team members encounter cultural differences [ 86 , 264 ].

Computer-mediated communication technology (e.g., email, video-conferencing) can reduce the negative effects of socio-cultural diversity early on in the life of a diverse virtual team due to their reductive capabilities [ 32 ]. In fact, use of these tools may even be beneficial for diverse teams for this reason [ 32 ]. Many issues regarding language barriers are surmounted by the use of asynchronous technology that allows workers to reflect and carefully consider their position before answering a question posed by a collaborator that primarily speaks another language [ 2 , 116 ]. These benefits result in the heavier use of asynchronous tools, which introduces the disadvantages of asynchronous tools (e.g., increased time and effort to effectively communicate, absence of important social information and nonverbal cues) [ 2 ]. Furthermore, asynchronous communication is not feasible in every situation. And, as discussed above, language barriers can cause problems during synchronous communication. Thus, developing technology that better supports synchronous communication across a language barrier is a promising opportunity for research in supporting collaboration.

Contradictions exist in the literature with regard to the effect of socio-cultural diversity on team performance. Edwards and Shridhar [ 66 ], for example, found no relationship between a team’s socio-cultural diversity and the learning, satisfaction, or performance of its members. Other research has suggested that socio-cultural diversity is unrelated to conflict [ 108 ]. Finally, Weijen found that whether or not members of a virtual team spoke English (specifically) did not have an influence on international collaboration, likely due to the pervasiveness of English as the default language for many international journals and indexed databases [ 259 ].

It is also recommended that the addition of basic cultural awareness [ 250 ] and language training [ 120 ] be incorporated into the beginning of every project to mitigate these issues before they become major problems. One specific suggestion is to employ some of the guidelines from agile development methodology (i.e., Scrum), such as daily status meetings, to mitigate the effect of assumptions by providing an opportunity to address issues or questions during the hand-off and allocation of tasks [ 250 ]. Given the plethora of tools developed for supporting Scrum (e.g., [ 209 , 229 , 251 ]), it would be interesting to see how these tools could be adapted to smooth over collaboration issues arising from cultural differences.

6.4.3 Work culture

Socio-cultural distance can be highly influenced by the work culture dimension. For example, there may be conflicts from high socio-cultural distance between two teammates from the same country that come from very different company backgrounds [ 8 ], while the opposite may be true of teammates with different cultural and national backgrounds who share a common work culture [ 2 ]. The success of a virtual team can hinge on factors such as differences in understanding with regards to processes and knowledge, institutional bureaucracy, status differences between team members, unworkable expectations reagarding shared goals and products, and conflicting or competing institutional priorities [ 54 ]. Power asymmetries in particular can create systemic bariers that need to be explicitly navigated (as opposed to expecting perfect process design will resolve them) [ 54 ]. While differences in work culture have the potential for stimulating innovation, proving access to richer skill sets, and sharing best practices, it also has the potential to cause misunderstandings [ 2 ] and communication breakdowns [ 14 ] between teammates. This influence is partly due to the difficulties associated with communicating subtl aspects of the team culture over distance (e.g., ‘how we do things around here’ [ 8 ]). For example, differences in the competitive or cooperative culture of a workplace can pose challenges [ 191 ]. Workers are less likely to be motivated to share their skills or ‘cover for each other (p. 1)’ in organizations or cultures that promote individual competition rather than cooperation. In contrast, cooperative cultures facilitate sharing skills and effort. This issue is particularly difficult to overcome in virtual teams.

Other differences in organizational structure and leadership can have a profound impact on successful collaboration in distributed groups. The characteristics of authority and authoritative roles vary across cultures [ 8 , 145 ] which can cause conflicts and undermine morale [ 2 ]. For example, [ 33 ] observed that in a collaboration between teams located in Ireland and the United States, the Irish workers required that authority figures earn their respect while the American workers were more likely to unquestioningly give respect to superiors. Another study that focused on a collaboration between teams in the United States and Europe had contrasting results [ 8 ]. Instead of the unquestioned respect found by Casey and Richardson, [ 8 ] saw that American workers were more confrontational with their superiors and verbally expressed objections and questions while the European teams had a more formal, hierarchical management structure. These differences indicate that support for differing work cultures needs to focus on the needs and conventions of the individual organizations and refrain from imposing standards based solely on the country in which the organization resides. The degree to which an organization allows autonomous decision-making afects relationships and behaviors between teammates and can inpact things like readiness to use technology in the collaboration or willingness to exchange knowledge [ 166 , 180 ].

Teams can also vary in their goals, norms, and incentives. A lack of alignment of incentives and goals as well as differences in expectations can pose very serious problems for a collaboration [ 191 ]. These misalignment’s are difficult to detect at a distance and require substantial negotiation to overcome [ 191 ], which is nontrivial using today’s technology. For example, collaborators may have different perceptions of time as a result of temporal discontinuities caused by differences in time zones, which may further reflect differences in the value systems of collaborators at each site [ 222 ]. Tensions may arise between workers at an American site that views time as a scarce commodity and perceives time as being something that can be spent, wasted, or lost, and collaborators at a Japanese site that view time as a cyclical, recurrent entity that is in unlimited supply [ 222 ]. Along with this finding comes different expectations with regards to how many hours a day team members are expected to work, or differing definitions of what it means to work hard [ 14 ], which often varies between countries [ 22 ]. These differences in expectations are particularly problematic when one team expects that another work more hours than they previously had been working [ 14 ]. Building a sense of shared goals and expectations happens more slowly in distributed groups [ 8 ], a process that could likely be assisted by the development of new communication technology. In addition, competing incentives can undermine a team’s performance [ 54 ].

Competitive funding models may affect willingness to collaborate and disincentivize team members to share skills, knowledge, and unpublished data [ 247 ]. For example, for the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia project, the core partners each created an individual grant agreement with the International Development Research Centre [ 54 ]. However, while the expectation was that partners would collaborate with each other, the partners were disincentivized to collaborate due to the individual grant agreements since the partners reported individually to the funding agency, rather than collectively [ 54 ]. Unfortunately, it is frequently unrealistic to expect these dynamics to resolve themselves in a short period of time and shift into an open and trusting relationship [ 54 ].

Expectations can be strongly influenced by the language used by different groups (e.g., ‘test procedure,’ ‘phase completion’) within a virtual team, sometimes creating animosity [ 8 ]. Language is further associated with methodology—for example, disparities in definitions of quality can be reflected in different assessment procedures [ 8 ]. Misunderstandings caused by differences in work practices and methodologies can affect coordination and cooperation [ 2 ], causing delays and conflicts [ 8 ]. In these situations, a common technical language must be developed to ensure understanding, which can be an extremely difficult task [ 15 , 122 , 172 , 252 ]. This need provides an opportunity for the development of technology to assist the creation and use of project-specific technical language.

In addition to differences in technical language, various groups within a virtual team may have different backgrounds that need to be reconciled, as different organizations within a group may have different expertise and experience that create incompatible views [ 55 ]. This issue is often unavoidable since one group may have specific knowledge necessary for the project to succeed [ 120 ]. Furthermore, differences in discipline and background have a stronger effect for distributed collaborations [ 211 ]. However, there are inconsistencies in the literature with regards to the effects of discipline on collaboration. Cummings and Kiesler, for example, found that field heterogeneity has a positive effect on distributed project success [ 50 ]. Specifically, they showed that projects including many disciplines had disclosed as many positive outcomes as did projects that involved fewer. However, in an earlier study, they found that projects incorporating many disciplines were less successful than projects that relied on fewer disciplines [ 133 ]. Thus, it is uncertain as to which conclusion is accurate, presenting open questions.

The way that administrative communication is managed [ 250 ] and tasks are allocated can play a big role [ 8 ] in the success of a virtual team. For example, a project manager could assign tasks differently and adjust the way that he or she communicates with management in accordance with the team’s culture and nationality [ 8 ]. Collaborations can further benefit from creating structured understandings about how to best work together by establishing expectations and definitions to undercut assumptions [ 8 ]. The challenge then becomes finding ways to develop technology that supports these structures while still facilitating innovation, ingenuity, and ‘rapid response to organizational threats or opportunities’ [ 64 ]. However, there are also inconsistencies between studies exploring the effects of work culture on collaboration. While Walsh and Maloney [ 261 ] stated that remote collaborations did not experience more work culture problems than co-located teams, McDonough et al. [ 170 ] found that differences in work culture and practices resulted in management problems in virtual teams. This disparity presents another open question.

7 Summary of findings and open questions

In this literature review, the major factors and challenges that impact collaboration in virtual teams were identified. Section  5 discussed distance factors (geographical, temporal, and perceived distance) and their associated challenges, including reduced motivation and awareness and difficulty establishing trust. In addition, barriers to informal and face-to-face communication, particularly the team’s technical competence and access to the appropriate technical infrastructure as well as prevalence of intra-team conflict were reviewed. Additional factors that particularly affect distance collaborations were outlined in Sect.  6 , namely the nature or coupling of the work, the need for explicit management, the configuration of dispersed sites and intra-team diversity along the dimensions of common ground, socio-cultural distance, and work culture. Several open questions and directions for future research were identified in the process of conducting the review; these are divided into questions of theory, questions of technology, and recommendations for future research. These findings are used to create design implications for the development of groupware targeted towards virtual teams later in Sect.  8 .

7.1 Questions of theory

7.1.1 should future research pursue ‘awareness’.

There is currently disagreement within the community as to whether or not ‘awareness’ should be taken as a conceptual approach to investigating collaboration challenges. Critics of ‘awareness’ describe the term as ‘ambiguous and unsatisfactory’ [ 224 ] and point towards it’s tendency to be paired with an adjective (e.g., ‘passive awareness’ [ 62 ]) in an attempt to lend some specificity [ 224 ]. Despite this, the awareness approach is still a commonly explored method [ 7 , 134 ], which suggests that there is a research opportunity to address this controversy.

7.1.2 Are coordination costs higher in teams that are temporally distributed?

There is also a lack of consensus within the community as to whether coordination costs are higher in teams that are temporally distributed. For example, while Espinosa and Carmel [ 73 ] state that coordination costs are reduced when team members are not working concurrently because no direct coordination takes place when the two teammates are not working at the same time, Ågerfalk et al. [ 2 ] and Battin et al. [ 11 ] assert that temporal distance significantly increases the cost and effort of coordination due to the added difficulties of dividing work across multiple time zones.

7.1.3 How do the disparities in levels of conflict and trust between balanced and imbalanced teams affect collaboration?

As previously discussed, levels of conflict and trust differ between balanced and imbalanced teams [ 188 , 210 ]. Specifically, subgroups in balanced teams experience weaker effects from faultlines on conflict and trust than large subgroups in imbalanced teams [ 210 ]. However, the ramifications are of these differences in trust and conflict are unknown, suggesting an opportunity for research.

7.1.4 Does tightly coupled work have a negative or a positive effect on collaboration?

Several studies [ 72 , 191 , 193 ] suggest that that tightly coupled work hinders distance collaboration. However, [ 15 ] found that tightly coupled work required collaborators to frequently interact to do their work and, as a result, forced these collaborators to know more about each other, help each other, and cultivate strong engagement despite being at geographically distant sites—which actually helps distance collaboration. Given the contrast between these conclusions, there is an opportunity for further research to investigate the effects of tightly coupled work, particularly in domains other than global software development.

7.1.5 What effect does geographic dispersion have on task and affective conflict?

Contradictions exist in the current literature as to the effect of geographic distance on affective and task-based conflict. Specifically, [ 179 ] found no significant difference in affective and task-based conflict between co-located and distributed teams. This, however, is in direct conflict with their later work [ 108 ]. These contradictions are particularly interesting given that the participants in both studies did research and product development, and are therefore directly comparable. It is therefore uncertain as to which conclusion is accurate.

7.1.6 Does background heterogeneity have a positive or a negative effect on collaboration?

This question is also currently unresolved, given the contradictions in literature. In 2002, Kiesler and Cummings found that projects incorporating many disciplines were less successful than projects that relied on fewer disciplines [ 133 ]. However, later they found that field heterogeneity has a positive effect on distributed project success [ 50 ].

7.1.7 Do virtual teams encounter more work-culture related problems than co-located teams?

This is yet another example of the community’s lack of consensus on issues surrounding collaboration. For example, while McDonough et al. [ 170 ] found that differences in work culture and practices resulted in management problems in virtual teams, Walsh and Maloney [ 261 ] stated that remote collaborations did not experience more work culture problems than co-located teams.

7.2 Questions of technology

7.2.1 how can we better support communication in temporally distant work.

Due to the differences in work schedule caused by differences in time zones, particularly when sites do not have overlapping workdays, distance workers rely on asynchronous technology (e.g., email, fax) to communicate with their collaborators. However, this method has several drawbacks. Asynchronous tools tend to increase the amount of time that a collaborator has to wait for a response [ 2 ] and can leave the recipient feeling overwhelmed by the number of asynchronous messages left during the previous night [ 19 ]. Moreover, the process of writing ideas in emails increases the risk of misunderstandings between collaborators [ 57 ] over talking in person or via the telephone.

7.2.2 How can we better support informal communication?

There is an additional challenge associated with communication technology in that there is insufficient support for determining a collaborator’s availability for spur-of-the-moment, informal communication [ 101 ]. This drawback, in particular, hampers informal communication that would otherwise happen during chance encounters in a co-located environment.

7.2.3 How can we design technology to assist in the development of trust?

Research shows that body language, subtle voice inflections, facial expressions, etc., which are notably more difficult to convey via communication technology, are essential to the development of trust [ 20 , 193 ]. Furthermore, communication technology is frequently used in an irregular, unpredictable, and inequitable manner, which hampers trust [ 123 ]. As a result, it is clear that current technology needs to be updated to better assist the development of trust in distance collaborations.

7.2.4 How do we support explicit management in teams that reject formal administration?

Explicit management is necessary for successful distributed, collaborative work [ 193 ]. However, some particular types of collaboration, such as research collaborations consisting mainly of scientists, avoid the application of explicit management in their projects [ 193 ].

7.2.5 How can we support synchronous communication across language barriers?

Language barriers are of significant concern in collaborations where collaborators have different socio-cultural backgrounds (i.e., speak different languages) [ 116 ] or different work backgrounds (i.e., use different jargon) [ 8 ]. In these cases, asynchronous communication allows collaborators to reflect before responding to each other, giving them a chance to look up unfamiliar terminology or become familiar with new ideas. However, asynchronous communication has several drawbacks, as mentioned earlier, and is not feasible in every situation.

7.2.6 How do we develop technology that supports structures for negotiating terminologies and methodologies while still facilitating flexibility?

Along with the issue of surmounting technical language barriers in synchronous communication comes the need to create and use a common technical language to ensure understanding in meaning and methodology. The development of a project-specific technical language is not an easy task [ 17 , 55 , 172 , 252 ], but is important enough to collaboration to warrant assistance from technology. It is also important to ensure that this technology is flexible enough to withstand changes that may be made to the project.

7.2.7 How can we leverage existing tools developed for supporting Scrum to mitigate problems caused by cultural differences?

It has been suggested that distance collaborations employ guidelines from agile development methodology, such as daily status meetings, to mitigate the effect of incorrect assumptions caused by socio-cultural or work culture differences. The existence of a vast number of tools developed specifically to assist Scrum (e.g., [ 209 , 229 , 251 ]) presents an opportunity to investigate how these technologies can be adapted to mitigate collaboration issues arising from cultural differences.

7.2.8 How can we design communication technology to support building a sense of shared goals and expectations?

Variances between times with regards to goals, norms, incentives, and expectations can pose very serious problems for a collaboration [ 191 ]. Overcoming these differences by building a sense of universal goals and standards is a slow, but vital, process for distributed groups [ 53 ]. Furthermore, these types of misalignments are hard to recognize in distance collaborations and require substantial negotiation to overcome [ 191 ], which is nontrivial given the limitations of today’s technology

7.3 Recommendations for future research

Siebdrat et al found that perceived distance was more strongly affected by a team’s national heterogeneity than by their spatio-temporal distance, and subsequently asserted that perceived distance is more indicative of collaboration challenges than spatio-temporal distance [ 231 ]. However, other work has demonstrated that distance can affect collaborators that are all in the same country at a single site [ 4 ], with low national heterogeneity and low spatio-temporal distance. Despite this, it is unclear whether perceived distance was high or low in this case due to the context of the study. Given the apparent influence of distance on collaboration, whether it is perceived, temporal, or spatial, it is therefore important to gain a better understanding of the relationship between these types of distance and their effects on collaboration.

8 Implications for design

This section uses the findings of this LR to address the final question, Research Question 2: How can we design technology for supporting virtual teams? To do so, the following four design implications for the development of groupware that supports collaboration in virtual teams are outlined.

8.1 Assist creation of common ground and work standards

Virtual teams consisting of workers with different expertise and organizational backgrounds require conversations about project-specific technical language, methodologies, and best practices. Technology should expedite and document these conversations and decisions to both create and facilitate the everyday use of technical language. Furthermore, since systems often incorrectly assume a shared knowledge of information [ 1 ] as recommended by [ 192 ], systems should document in a manner that allows users to search for abstract representations of information. Moreover, since methodologies, best practices, and technical language tend to evolve over time, this technology needs to also support the resulting negotiation and discussion processes, as opposed to only facilitating the initial decision-making process.

8.2 Facilitate communication

Both rich discourse (i.e., containing social information and nonverbal cues as well as words, typically provided by face-to-face communication), and spontaneous, informal communication have been identified as key to preventing conflict and improving trust in virtual teams. Thus, it is imperative that technology is designed to provide the benefits of face-to-face conversations (e.g., video conferencing), such as ease in immediately detecting confusion. This is important not only for synchronous communication but also asynchronous conversations since those are the most likely to have misunderstandings that could be mitigated with additional non-verbal information. Mechanisms for supporting informal communication (e.g., chance encounters) is similarly necessary. In addition, given the difficulties experienced by virtual teams where workers are required to speak in a language that is not native to them, it is important to consider means for supporting synchronous communication across language barriers.

8.3 Provide mechanisms for work transparency

One of the key challenges faced by virtual teams is feeling a sense of connectedness to the rest of the team. This is both due to the motivational effects of not feeling isolated and the increased effort required to feel heard and acknowledged by the rest of the team located at another site. Thus, technology should be designed to provide transparency that allows workers to feel aware of their teammates, Furthermore, this technology should highlight and encourage the contributions of an individual and boost visibility within the team.

However, technology that promotes transparency, particularly technology that creates the sense of a shared workspace through open video connections, should be wary of infringing on the privacy of the team since the more information a person sends, the greater the impact on one’s privacy [ 119 ]. Furthermore, the more information a person receives, the greater the chance of disturbing work [ 119 ]. Thus, it is important to reach a good balance between providing awareness and preserving privacy and limiting distractions.

8.4 Design lightweight, familiar technology

Technical infrastructure varies across organizations—teams may not have the resources to support data-heavy communication tools, limiting their access to sophisticated collaboration technology (e.g., multiplane video conferencing). Furthermore, infrastructure may even vary within a virtual team, limiting tool use for the entire group since it is important that communication capabilities be evenly distributed [ 193 ]. Thus, care should be taken to engineer technology that is as lightweight as possible, maximizing the number of potential users. Virtual teams also face challenges related to the technical competence of their team members. It is therefore recommended that designers create technology with enough similarities to the technology currently employed by the team to facilitate adoption. New technology also needs to be compatible with existing tools, to promote adoption [ 194 ].

9 Conclusion

This literature review provided an overview of the collaboration challenges experienced by virtual teams as well as current mitigation strategies. This review utilized a well-planned search strategy to identify a total of 255 relevant studies, which chiefly concentrated on computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). Using the selected studies, we described challenges as belonging to five categories: geographical distance, temporal distance, perceived distance, the configuration of dispersed teams, and diversity of workers. Findings also revealed opportunities for research and open questions. Finally, opportunities and implications for designing groupware that better support collaborative tasks in virtual teams was discussed through the description of four design implications: assist the creation of common ground and work standards; facilitate communication; provide mechanisms for work transparency; and design lightweight, familiar technology.

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Communication: Online vs. Face-to-Face Interactions

Human beings are social creatures by nature. Socialising and engaging with others is almost as crucial as food and water to our survival. The way in which we communicate has been rapidly evolving over recent years. With advances in technology, the internet, instant messaging and now smartphones, there are many channels and modalities in which to interact with others. However, has our evolutionary brain been able to adapt and keep up with this inundation of communication possibilities? This article examines whether these virtual interactions can replace face-to-face communication in terms of promoting satisfaction and enhancing overall well-being.

Research conducted by Lee et al. (2011) revealed that while face-to-face communication can predict enhanced quality of life, internet communication cannot. While the internet has opened up a new realm of possibilities in terms of connecting with people across the globe, at any time, there are inherent factors in online communication that limit its ability to promote the same levels of satisfaction as traditional face-to-face communication.

Why online communication may be less satisfying than face-to-face

There are many crucial differences between online and face-to-face communication which can lead to online communication being less emotionally satisfying and fulfilling than face-to-face communication. Below are several reasons as to why this may be the case:

• Socializing online takes time away from offline interactions : it goes without saying that the more time an individual spends online, the less time they have to engage with friends and family members in real life. This may lead to a degeneration of the social skills necessary to engage in real life interactions.
• Online interactions may promote passive engagement : online interactions take place in the context of a multitude of platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to mention a few. These distractions can direct an individual away from the conversation and towards passive engagement with the platform, in the form of scrolling. This type of engagement is similar to watching television, which has been shown to decrease mood and overall well-being
• Conversational topics may be of a more shallow nature : As opposed to a face-to-face conversation which can flow naturally, easily seguing from one topic to the next, online conversations may be more restricted. Perhaps the response effort in typing out a long paragraph expressing how you are truly feeling is too great, resulting in short answers that do not properly convey the message. Moreover, online conversations tend to focus on a narrower scope of subject material or may be utilitarian in nature, simply conveying the essential message.
• Interactions may be fragmented and responses delayed : how many times have you seen a message and replied to it several hours or perhaps several days later? Online conversations are not conducive to free, open communication since the communication partner can essentially step out at any time. This insecurity does not foster opening up and sharing on a deeper level for fear that the communication partner may simply disappear. If we do open up and the communication partner does not respond immediately, this can make us feel that our experiences are not valid or worthy of another’s attention.
•   Nonverbal cues are less easy to distinguish : According to Birdwhistell (1970), about 65 percent of the social meaning of a situation is derived from nonverbal cues. Even with video options, nonverbal cues can be distorted or concealed making interpretation of those cues more difficult. Without being able to gauge a person’s reaction or emotional state, misunderstandings and miscommunications are likely to occur which can lead to breakdowns and fights within relationships ( check out Psychmind’s article on how social media is affecting romantic relationships ).
• Interactions in real life may be adversely affected by smartphone presence : simply having a smartphone present when engaging in a face-to-face conversation can have negative effects on the quality of that interaction. With the unending possibilities for entertainment comfortably lodged in one’s pocket, it is easy to become distracted and casually turn the screen on, flick through social media all the while trying to maintain a real life interaction. This implies boredom and a lack of interest with the communication partner and can lead to weaker ties being formed as well as more superficial conversation.
• People may not represent themselves truthfully online : whilst this can be said for online and offline interactions, it is easier to misrepresent oneself online than it is during a face-to-face encounter. It is possible to re-write and edit text endlessly, whereas a slip of the tongue once said cannot be taken back.

Overall, face-to-face communication fosters higher quality interactions than online communication. Is that to say the virtual world has nothing to offer in terms of socializing? Absolutely not. Online communication and social media should be used as supplemental to one’s social life. It should not, however, be integral or the sole source where one socialises and interacts with others. The internet, technology and smartphones have brought with them many benefits. They have increased work flexibility in some fields, allowed for people to remain in touch across continents, made life easier by congregating all necessary tools to pay bills, check emails, talk to loved ones etc. on one device. However, when it comes to our human need to socialize and connect with others, face-to-face communication is still required. In Lee et al.’s (2011) analysis, the researchers found that using the Internet for interpersonal communication had a negative impact on people’s quality of life whereas talking to a friend or family member face-to-face for just 10 minutes had a positive impact on quality of life.

In order to enhance our well-being, we need a healthy balance between our virtual and real worlds. While technology has been able to bring communities and people closer together, it is up to us to foster those connections and nurture them through old fashioned face-to-face encounters. It is vital for us as a human species to be able to continue to connect with others without hiding behind a screen.

Rotondi, V., Stanca L., Tomasuolo M. (October 10, 2017). Connecting alone: Smartphone use, quality of social interactions and well-being. Journal of Economic Psychology, 63, 17-26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2017.09.001

Lee, P., S., N., Leung, L., Lo, V., Xiong, C., and Wu, T. (2011). Internet Communication Versus Face-to-face Interaction in Quality of Life. Social Indicators Research, 100, 375–389. DOI 10.1007/s11205-010-9618-3

Kraut, Robert & Patterson, Michael & Lundmark, Vicki & Kiesler, Sara & Mukopadhyay, Tridas & Scherlis, William. (1998). Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being?. The American psychologist. 53. 1017-31. 10.1037/0003-066X.53.9.1017.

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Chapter 8: COVID and learning

8.5 The effect of online learning on communication during COVID-19 (synthesis)

Anonymous English 102 Writer

February 2021

Have you ever thought about how a virus   could change the habits of the world, especially in education? The crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic hit all over the world and has completely changed education. Some colleges refused to switch from the traditional teaching style to virtual classes. Many argue about this issue and how to deal with these new circumstances; some of them claim that the coronavirus is a good turning point that can open our eyes to a new style of learning. Others, however, prefer traditional, in-person learning. So, I am interested in learning how Covid-19 affects communications and our lifestyle specifically between the years 2020-2021 because our education system is impacted by this crisis   and I am   also   interesting to find the results and the studies that people have done about this topic.   I was surprised to see the number of studies   discussing COVID-19 that have already been published.   

The article “Online and Remote Learning in Higher Education Institutes: A Necessity in Light of COVID-19 Pandemic” by Wahab Ali discusses how higher education is being affected by COVID-19; specifically, the article describes the shift to online learning, difficulties students face, and the challenging teaching environments.   Ali argues   that virtual learning is more  effective than traditional learning , he   discuss   the difficulties that faced the students,   which caused a lot of challenges in the teaching   environments   ,   due to the rapid technological development beyond the crisis that led people to turn to technology in order to study and   communicate with each other effectively   (16). Also, some colleges give tools to the students   in order to   help them study effectively and give them the opportunity to study and communicate (16).   He relates to Gee’s   secondary discourse when he claims that in this   period of time, all people, especially students, will easily adapt to online learning due to   their   big knowledge, skills and   familiarity   with technology,   so he   stats that   the new technology   affects our communications in our daily   life style,   and how our education under this pandemic   allow   us to learn a   new ways   to communicate   (Ali   17).   If, for example, students want to contact their teachers, they will have to learn how to send formal emails; but, the knowledge of sending emails and communicating online is already ingrained in them. However, some   universities closed because they could not create a good environment for their students to learn. Ali encourages authorities and teachers to provide more information and to be prepared to improve the education system, strengthen their plans to provide more   effective lectures, and give students the opportunity to understand their lectures (17). He refers to Gee’s article, “The Oral Mode is More Narrowly Useful,” because both mention that the development of technology has major impacts upon society and communication; Gee emphasizes in his article the importance of learning new methods and how to deal with technology. The oral mode refers to spoken language during face-to-face classes. Gee and Ali also have the same opinion about the importance of learning new   technology. In addition, Ali motions in his article that some universities, such as New York University, were prepared for rapid change and met all their students’ needs for online classes by giving them tools and technology (19); successful adaptations require prior plans and an awareness of all changing circumstances (19).   

Moreover, an article by Deepika Nambiar,   “The   impact of online learning during COVID-19: students’ and teachers’ perspective” discusses the impacts of online learning on the communications between the students and their teachers. She argues that interactions between   them depend on their perspective and experiences of online learning (1); she includes a study with a survey method to collect data from universities in Bangalore to determine educators’ and teachers’   prescriptives   because education has a special place and plays a big role in India (1). She observed that rapidly switching the education system in India to be online has a very big  impact on the students’ interactions and communications due to the lack of required methods and apps for virtual learning (7); students were adapting to take their lecture in-person   even though   some colleges give tools to the students. Even so, they cannot   make every aspect of online   education equal; for example, not all students have access to reliable internet, which immediately   puts them at a disadvantage. This rapid switch affects their performances, grades, and attendance, lowering their ability to effectively participate during class time (7). Also, online learning reduces students’ understanding of lectures and prevents them from physically interacting in their labs or researching (7). Nambiar states in her article that “the results of the survey showed that 86.9% of the teachers reported that they preferred classroom teaching method more than online teaching mode” and “11.8% preferred online classes” (4). So, online learning prevents teachers from understanding their students’ understanding of the material which allows them to know the effectiveness of their materials and method they use. Also, it minimizes their ability to individually contact their students to evaluate their levels. Furthermore, teachers had difficulty adapting to an online format while still teaching effectively (Nambiar   2). Teachers also confirmed that online learning is an evidence of the evolution that allows them to teach from anywhere, but it has harmful effects on their interactions with students and prevents them from engaging with their students physically (7). It allows students to have more absences due to the lack of internet services or poverty. Lastly, teachers must spend many more hours preparing their lectures because online learning has a more formal form (7). Overall, this study shows how online learning affects students and faculty and discusses all negative aspects that the authorities   should be aware of when they are making the rules for the education systems.   In order to   obtain a comfortable environment for the students to learn and support the teachers, authorities   must create strong strategies to improve learning under this pandemic (10).  

Furthermore,   Settha   Kuama   in “Is Online Learning Suitable for All English Language Students?” begins by explaining how online   learning affects students who are studying the English language.   Kuama   states that, despite all the advantages of online learning due to its flexible environment, English learners have faced many difficulties throughout online learning such as the “cognitive challenge,” which includes understanding apps’ dynamic functions in order to succeed (65). Students also have trouble organizing their time to ensure they never miss their due dates and watch their lectures, which don’t include any attendance grades.   In addition, according to Aydin (2011), students may have “computer   and Internet   anxiety,” anxiety caused by a poor internet connection or slow computer, which also prevents them from having a comfortable space to study. Also, students are used to asking instructors questions and studying with their peers, and online learning prevents them from having these opportunities (Kuama   65). This article divides students into two groups: the students who succeed and those who struggle   Kuama   states in this article that successful students have a high level of self-regulation, know how to study effectively, and are aware of their responsibilities. They check their homework daily and use the internet to learn new studying strategies   in order to   study effectively. On the   other hand, the students that   do not succeed   in their studies do not learn any strategies to help them during their studies (69). But overall, both kinds of students agree that face-to-face learning is an opportunity to interact with each other, especially because the English language depends on conversations between students and their instructors and group work. Additionally, students will get more motivation from their peers (73). Moreover,   Kuama   discusses through the article that,   in order to   give all the students a quality online education, they   have to   have the opportunities to   learn about the online programs and apps (74).   Also,   students who have a low efficiency in   English   have   to   improve their English skills in order to   communicate   and participate with others (74).   

James Gee’s article “What is Literacy” attempts to describe literacy by describing   discourse, the effective way of using words to communicate with each other and write our own   thoughts (23). Gee defines literacy as being able to use a set of words for multiple purposes   and in numerous settings (23). Where these settings are defined as discourses, and they are   categorized into primary and secondary discourses and even these types of conversation can be   broken down. For example, a primary discourse is that way of speaking that you mostly acquire   from your family and the people around you at   birth. An example of some primary   discourses includes being in a certain country, playing with a friend, or speaking with family   members around us: these examples are described as languages a person acquires for free (22).   Secondary discourses are uses of   a language that people actively and primarily; it requires effort,   practice, and experiences, and a person does not grow up speaking in the dialect. Examples can   include the way we speak when working as a team in our workplace or if we want to engage in a   new community with a new group we have to learn their language and their styles in order to   deal with   them.  

Works Cited    

Ali, Wahab. “Online and remote learning in higher education institutes: A necessity in light of   COVID-19 pandemic.”   Higher Education Studies   10.3 (2020): 16-25.    

Gee, James Paul. “What is Literacy?”   Negotiating academic literacies: Teaching and learning   across languages and cultures   (1998): 51-59.    

Kuama,   Settha. “Is Online Learning Suitable for All English   Language   Students?.   “   PASAA:   Journal of Language Teaching and Learning in Thailand   52 (2016): 53-82.   Nambiar, Deepika. “The impact of online learning during COVID-19: students’ and teachers’   perspective.”   The International Journal of Indian Psychology   8.2 (2020): 783-793.  

Understanding Literacy in Our Lives by Anonymous English 102 Writer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Quick Thinks: Communicating and Leading Virtually

In this bonus episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, host Matt Abrahams shares quick tips on communicating via screen.

March 27, 2020

Leading successful meetings remotely and being a strong speaker on-screen require specific skills. Communicating effectively has to do with your presence, ability to leverage tools, and your audience engagement. In this “Quick Thinks” podcast episode, host Matt Abrahams shares best practices for becoming a more effective and engaging online communicator.

Think Fast, Talk Smart is a podcast produced by Stanford Graduate School of Business. Each episode provides concrete, easy-to-implement tools and techniques to help you hone and enhance your communication.

Full Transcript

Matt Abrahams : Communicating virtually is no longer a convenience, it’s now a necessity. As more and more companies and classrooms transition to online communication, we all can benefit from best practices to ensure our ideas are communicated clearly and concisely. My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach Strategic Communications at Stanford Graduate School of Business and welcome to a Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.

I believe there are four main areas to explore as we strive to be more effective and engaging online communicators. So let’s get started.

The first has to do with what I call virtual presenting hygiene. This has to do with how you’ve set up your environment and tools. First and foremost, it’s important to have a place that is quiet and has a neutral background. Be thoughtful of the lighting that you have. You can invest in professional lighting for video or photography, you want to make sure you have a camera that is good quality. You might want to purchase an additional mic or a headset that has a microphone in it.

When possible, you want your camera to be at your head-level. When we communicate to people we’re used to communicating straight-on. You may need to do this by raising your camera, you can do this by simply stacking a bunch of books or you can actually buy a professional stand. You can always do a recording to make sure it looks and sounds the way you like. Most of the online tools that we use, Zoom, Webex , Skype, Google Hangouts, they all have a record feature.

Once you have your virtual hygiene established, you want to next focus on presence. Presence has to do with how you appear, so we need to think about a couple of things. First and foremost, is you want to look straight at the camera when you present. Many of us are enticed to look at our notes, or the little thumb nails on the people on the screen and yet, to the people we’re talking to, it looks like we’re looking down. You’ll want to look directly at the camera. I’ve been known to actually tape a picture of family members or friends right behind the camera, so when I look at the camera, I see them and it feels a little more natural. It makes sense to also stand when we present. When we stand we tend to be more focused, we can use gestures, we can breathe better, and we don’t slouch. If possible, have a set up that allows you to stand. And another tip: get yourself a slide advancer. A slide advancer you can stand further away from your camera and your gestures can be seen and you can advance your slides smoothly.

Beyond presence we have to think about engagement. We’ve all be part of webinars, web meetings, and teleconferences that have been disengaging. So a couple ways to invite your audiences to pay attention, rather than get distracted by all of the other things on their phones or computers, is to vary your voice. Humans are wired to pay attention to novelty and things that change, so if you’re monotone, you’re going to disengage your audience. A great way to do this is simply record yourself and listen, you don’t have to watch, just listen, and see if your voice has variation. If it doesn’t, you may consider using more emotive words, when we use emotive words like excited or challenge , we tend to inflect those in our voice.

Next, make sure you leverage the tools of the virtual platform you’re using. Many come with chat features, polling features, some kind of feedback where people can raise their hand or signal if you’re going too slow or too fast. You can even send people through a chat to an external document like a Google Doc or a shared doc where they do some work, and you can see that they’re doing that work online, that’s a way to get everybody engaged.

Finally, invite people to show video as you are presenting. If everyone can see people, we tend to pay attention more. Humans are wired to be intrigued by others’ faces, so if you see others’ faces on the screen, you’re more likely to pay attention.

First, set expectations, and this comes in two places. I think one of the most under-utilized features that we have to set expectations is the meeting invite. In the meeting invite, don’t just specify the URL to go to and the time, you can actually set rules that you expect people to follow, such as “state your name before you present.” You can include some questions you want people to think about when they come to your meeting or presentation, that way when you start you can start immediately with engagement and those questions. So leverage the expectation-setting-ability of the meeting invites that you send.

Second, when in the midst of your virtual communication, if you want to solicit input or start dialogue, set some boundaries, set some expectations. You need to do this more narrowly to avoid people over-speaking each other. When using tech there are some built in delays and we need to make sure we don’t have people over-stepping each other. One way to do that is to set boundaries or expectations that are more narrow than they would be in person.

For example, in-person I might say, “I’d like to now hear your thoughts on the plans I just discussed.” But if you’re virtual you might say, “Now I’d like to hear your thoughts on the cost of the implementation plan.” And after those come in, you say, “I’d now like to talk about the implementation timeline,” and as those issues come in you can address them. So by taking narrower sets of input or questions, you have fewer people over-speaking, so managing those expectations are important as well.

Finally, when it comes to leading a meeting, we know from research that human attention tends to dwindle after 8-10 minutes, so you want to make sure that you quickly change things up: maybe you change speakers, maybe you take a poll or go into Q&A mode. Be sure every 8-10 minutes you’re changing things up to reinvigorate people’s attention. So I hope you’re taking away specific things you can do to be a better online communicator.

It has to do with your virtual hygiene, your presence, your engagement, and how you actually lead when you’re virtually communicating.

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March 12, 2020 From Monologue to Dialogue: How to Handle a Skeptical Audience Use these techniques when handling challenges and objections.

February 27, 2020 The Journey to Mastery: How Self Reflection Can Improve Communication Implement these best practices before and after both high-stakes and everyday communication to improve your effectiveness.

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108 Virtual Team Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

In today's fast-paced and globalized world, virtual teams have become increasingly common. With technology allowing for seamless communication and collaboration across borders, virtual teams are becoming a popular choice for many organizations. However, managing a virtual team comes with its own set of challenges, one of which is ensuring that team members stay engaged and motivated.

One way to keep team members engaged is by assigning them essay topics that are both relevant to their work and interesting to them personally. To help you get started, here are 108 virtual team essay topic ideas and examples that you can use to keep your team members motivated and engaged:

• The impact of remote work on productivity
• The benefits of virtual team collaboration
• The challenges of managing a virtual team
• The role of communication in virtual teams
• The importance of setting goals in virtual teams
• The benefits of diversity in virtual teams
• The role of trust in virtual team success
• The impact of time zones on virtual team communication
• The benefits of virtual team meetings
• The challenges of virtual team conflict resolution
• The role of technology in virtual team collaboration
• The importance of feedback in virtual teams
• The benefits of virtual team building activities
• The challenges of onboarding new virtual team members
• The impact of culture on virtual team dynamics
• The benefits of virtual team training programs
• The challenges of virtual team performance evaluation
• The role of leadership in virtual teams
• The benefits of virtual team retreats
• The challenges of virtual team motivation
• The impact of virtual team communication tools
• The benefits of virtual team recognition programs
• The challenges of virtual team time management
• The role of emotional intelligence in virtual teams
• The benefits of virtual team mentoring programs
• The challenges of virtual team decision-making
• The impact of virtual team autonomy
• The benefits of virtual team innovation
• The challenges of virtual team accountability
• The role of conflict resolution in virtual teams
• The benefits of virtual team creativity
• The challenges of virtual team collaboration tools
• The impact of virtual team work-life balance
• The benefits of virtual team project management
• The challenges of virtual team communication barriers
• The role of virtual team conflict resolution techniques
• The benefits of virtual team goal setting
• The challenges of virtual team trust building
• The impact of virtual team feedback mechanisms
• The benefits of virtual team decision-making processes
• The challenges of virtual team cultural differences
• The role of virtual team leadership styles
• The benefits of virtual team problem-solving techniques
• The challenges of virtual team knowledge sharing
• The impact of virtual team collaboration platforms
• The benefits of virtual team communication strategies
• The challenges of virtual team accountability measures
• The role of virtual team performance metrics
• The benefits of virtual team conflict resolution strategies
• The challenges of virtual team decision-making tools
• The impact of virtual team trust building exercises
• The benefits of virtual team goal alignment
• The challenges of virtual team feedback mechanisms
• The role of virtual team communication tools
• The benefits of virtual team collaboration platforms
• The challenges of virtual team leadership styles
• The impact of virtual team knowledge sharing
• The challenges of virtual team communication strategies
• The role of virtual team accountability measures
• The benefits of virtual team performance metrics
• The challenges of virtual team conflict resolution strategies
• The impact of virtual team decision-making tools
• The benefits of virtual team trust building exercises
• The challenges of virtual team goal alignment
• The role of virtual team feedback mechanisms
• The benefits of virtual team communication tools
• The challenges of virtual team collaboration platforms
• The impact of virtual team leadership styles
• The benefits of virtual team knowledge sharing
• The challenges of virtual team problem-solving techniques
• The role of virtual team communication strategies
• The benefits of virtual team accountability measures
• The challenges of virtual team performance metrics
• The impact of virtual team conflict resolution strategies
• The benefits of virtual team decision-making tools
• The challenges of virtual team trust building exercises
• The role of virtual team goal alignment
• The benefits of virtual team feedback mechanisms
• The challenges of virtual team communication tools
• The benefits of virtual team leadership styles
• The role of virtual team problem-solving techniques
• The impact of virtual team performance metrics
• The role of virtual team trust building exercises
• The role of virtual team knowledge sharing
• The impact of virtual team accountability measures
• The role of virtual team decision-making tools

By assigning your virtual team members essay topics that are relevant to their work and interests, you can help keep them engaged and motivated. These 108 virtual team essay topic ideas and examples can serve as inspiration for creating assignments that will challenge your team members to think critically, communicate effectively, and collaborate successfully. With the right essay topics, you can help your virtual team members develop valuable skills and contribute to the success of your organization.

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• Published: 23 May 2022

The impact of COVID-19 on digital communication patterns

• Evan DeFilippis   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9757-4374 1 ,
• Stephen Michael Impink   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5910-642X 2 ,
• Madison Singell 3 ,
• Jeffrey T. Polzer 1 &
• Raffaella Sadun 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  9 , Article number:  180 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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• Business and management

We explore the impact of COVID-19 on employees’ digital communication patterns through an event study of lockdowns in 16 large metropolitan areas in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Using de-identified, aggregated meeting and email meta-data from 3,143,270 users, we find, compared to pre-pandemic levels, increases in the number of meetings per person (+12.9 percent) and the number of attendees per meeting (+13.5 percent), but decreases in the average length of meetings (−20.1 percent). Collectively, the net effect is that people spent less time in meetings per day (−11.5 percent) in the post-lockdown period. We also find significant and durable increases in length of the average workday (+8.2 percent, or +48.5 min), along with short-term increases in email activity. These findings provide insight into how formal communication patterns have changed for a large sample of knowledge workers in major cities. We discuss these changes in light of the ongoing challenges faced by organizations and workers struggling to adapt and perform in the face of a global pandemic.

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Introduction.

The COVID-19 global pandemic disrupted the way organizations function, just as it disrupted life more generally. As the number of infections increased, governments across the globe closed their borders and shut down physical work sites to reduce the spread of infection caused by the virus. By April 7, 2020, 95 percent of Americans were required to shelter-in-place within their homes, similar to the citizens of many other countries. Organizations responded by altering their work arrangements to accommodate these new realities, including a rapid shift to working from home for large segments of knowledge workers. Many workers were forced to work remotely to perform their jobs regardless of how conducive their home environment or task requirements were to such arrangements. Given the large-scale economic and social upheaval wrought by COVID-19, this abrupt transition to remote work occurred at a time when organizational coordination, decision-making processes, and productivity were never more consequential.

This paper provides a large-scale analysis of how formal digital communication patterns changed in the early stages of the pandemic. For all the anecdotes and speculation about working from home during the pandemic, there is still little systematic evidence on how day-to-day work activities changed due to these unexpected shocks. This paper explores, in particular, how the pandemic altered patterns of interactions—measured through a comprehensive set of meeting and email activity metrics—as organizations rapidly moved their activity to remote work. The analysis is based on de-identified meta-data from an information technology services provider that licenses digital communications solutions to organizations worldwide. We use digital meta-data on emails and meetings for 3,143,270 users across 21,478 de-identified firms located in 16 large metropolitan areas, aggregated by the provider to the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and day across all available firms (see Appendix, Figs. B1 and B2 ). The meta-data provides information on both email and meeting frequency, as well as other salient aspects of digital communications, such as meeting size, meeting duration, the number of email recipients, the time an email was sent, and related dimensions (see Appendix, Table A1 ).

The precise geographical and longitudinal information contained in the communication meta-data allows us to study the evolution of meeting and email activity before and throughout the first stage of the pandemic. To identify the time at which workers presumably shifted to remote work, we selected 16 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) that experienced government-mandated lockdowns. These lockdowns established a clear breakpoint, after which we could infer that people were working away from their offices. The earliest lockdown in our data occurred on March 8, 2020, in Milan, Italy, and the latest lockdown occurred on March 25, 2020, in Washington, DC (see Table 1 for more information). We report data from a window starting 8 weeks before the lockdown and ending 8 weeks after the lockdown in each MSA to explore how the behavior of workers changed.

Digital communication and remote work

Theorizing about how employees might have responded to the COVID-19 crisis is challenging for many reasons. First, research conducted before the pandemic examined transitions to remote work that were voluntary, less widespread, and performed under less dramatic circumstances (Bloom et al., 2013 ; Choudhury et al., 2019 ). These circumstances are fundamentally different from the situation that organizations found themselves in shortly after the start of the pandemic.

Second, the few examples of forced transitions to remote work which do exist occurred in the aftermath of acute disasters, such as the Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand or the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami in Japan (e.g. Donnelly and Proctor-Thomson, 2015 ; Dye et al., 2014 ), rather than a persistent crisis more similar to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, these transitions typically involved a smaller fraction of the workforce over a shorter duration, making it harder to generalize from them to the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Third, there is scarce prior evidence on digital communication across many firms, even in the absence of a crisis. For example, the nascent literature on the “science of meetings” tends to examine the behavior of a single or handful of firms, or use self-report measures derived from survey responses from a subset of firms or workers, instead of digitally-stored communications data at the scale examined in this paper (e.g. Rogelberg et al., 2006 , 2010 ; Allen et al., 2015 ). While there is a growing body of research examining how digital communications have changed since the pandemic (e.g. Cao et al., 2021 ; Yang et al., 2021 ), these studies tend to examine a single company, making it difficult to generalize results across different organizational features, such as size and industry.

Finally, existing research provides little guidance on how various dimensions of organizational communication activities relate to each other, even though they are likely to be interdependent. For example, meeting count—the number of meetings employees attend in a day—is likely to depend on other dimensions of meeting activity, such as meeting duration or size. Organizations may be reluctant to have meetings that are too long, involve many participants, and occur too frequently, as this may inhibit employees from accomplishing their individual work. Similarly, having infrequent, short, and small meetings may also be suboptimal, as it would limit opportunities for organization-wide coordination on broader tasks. The lack of research about how organizations navigate this balancing act makes it difficult to distill clear hypotheses about how the forced shift to remote work during the pandemic affected the different, interrelated dimensions of communication activity examined in this paper.

Because of the lack of existing theory and the novelty of these widespread, forced transitions to remote work, we do not generate a set of hypotheses. Instead, we summarize what we might infer from adjacent research on the individual variables considered in this paper.

Meeting frequency

The communication literature shows that digital communication is generally less information-dense than face-to-face interaction (Sproull and Kiesler, 1986 ; Daft and Lengel, 1986 ). Because virtual work must take place via “lean” informational channels, such as emails and videoconferences, certain social cues that are readily apprehended in-person can be lost when translated into digital mediums (Denstadli et al., 2012 ; Han et al., 2011 ). According to this reasoning, newly virtual teams adjusting to the pandemic should communicate more frequently via email and meet more often to compensate for the lack of rich social and contextual information previously conveyed through face-to-face interaction (Carletta et al., 2000 ; DeSanctis et al., 1993 ). We can arrive at a similar prediction by examining research on virtual teams, which finds that teams working remotely often suffer from a lack of formal accountability as managers cannot directly observe their employees’ performance (Kurland and Bailey, 1999 ). To compensate for this fact, managers on virtual teams may meet more frequently to ensure that employees accomplish organizational tasks (Maurer, 2020 ; White, 2014 ; Wiesenfeld et al., 1999 , 2001 ).

However, emerging research suggests that an unconditional increase in meeting frequency is unlikely, given that virtual meetings tend to be more cognitively demanding, more prone to distraction, and less effective in many ways than their in-person counterparts (Wiederhold, 2020 ). Adding to this problem are the unique challenges associated with technological adoption, including unanticipated service interruptions and the need for skilled meeting organizers who are fluent in the advanced features of meeting platforms and can resolve issues when they arise (Deakin and Wakefield, 2014 ; Seitz, 2016 ). These issues might offset the inclination to hold more meetings if managers acknowledge the diminishing returns to virtual meetings and modulate their frequency as teams transition remotely (Nardi and Whittaker, 2002 ; Wiederhold, 2020 ).

Meeting size

The literature is equally equivocal when it comes to the topic of meeting size. Research on collaboration, for example, observes that organizations often have different norms and conventions governing average meeting size, and that these norms are important predictors of meeting effectiveness, task performance, and inclusiveness in remote collaboration (Allen et al., 2020 ). But the literature is largely silent on whether these pre-existing organizational differences in meeting norms are likely to be preserved as firms transition remotely, or if organizations will be forced to adopt new norms as employees adjust to working from home. Convincing cases can be made for either prediction. For example, we might expect meetings to become larger as organizations shift to remote work since meeting organizers can be more inclusive about who gets invited to virtual meetings, since they do not have to worry about the physical capacity of meeting rooms. Managers may even see advantages to increasing the total number of people invited to meetings, as the problems that organizations face during this time will likely be relevant to a greater fraction of the workforce.

On the other hand, there are also good reasons to predict that meetings would become smaller as organizations get accustomed to remote work. Managers who use meetings primarily as an accountability tool to check-in with remote employees could increase the frequency of one-on-one meetings, which would drive the average size of meetings downward. Meeting organizers are also likely to consider workers’ attentional limitations, which are exacerbated in larger digital meetings where expectations regarding listening behaviors and interaction are less strict (Lyons and Kim, 2010 ). To mitigate these concerns, managers may opt for smaller meetings to minimize the risk of distraction.

Meeting length

Meeting length is another topic about which the literature is inconclusive. While there is a wealth of research discussing the challenges of long or inefficiently staggered meetings (e.g. Rogelberg et al., 2006 ; Stray et al., 2013 ), there is very little empirical research directly testing the dimension of meeting length, and few theoretical pieces that might inform predictions about what to expect as organizations transition remotely. As with other dimensions of meeting activity, plausible cases can be made for expecting either an increase or a decrease in the average length of meetings that employees attend. For example, employees are likely to have a hard time staying engaged in long virtual meetings (Wiederhold, 2020 ), which may force managers to respond by decreasing the length of meetings to reduce strain on employees’ attention. Similarly, as a greater proportion of meetings are used as a “check-in” tool to enforce employee accountability remotely, we might also expect a decrease in average meeting length, since check-in meetings can be completed in a shorter amount of time than other meeting types (Arnfalk and Kogg, 2003 ).

However, we might also expect the average meeting length to increase for a different set of reasons. For example, organizations may simply face more severe and frequent problems in the middle of a pandemic than they usually do. These problems may require longer meetings to adequately share information and ensure tasks are effectively coordinated across employees. Online meetings may also be less efficient than their in-person counterparts, owing to technical problems, communication challenges, and distractions at home. These inefficiencies may require meeting organizers to schedule relatively longer meetings to accommodate challenges inherent to digital media.

Email activity

The trade-offs entailed in these decisions not only affect meeting activity, but communication activity more broadly. After all, much of the information that is exchanged in meetings could be conveyed in written form via email or other text-based tools. For this reason, our paper also focuses on email activity, which continues to be a prominent channel of communication in many organizations. In the context of this paper, email is a particularly important communication stream because it can act as both a complement to and substitute for meeting activity. Many tasks, for example, can be more efficiently accomplished via email, given its asynchronous, text-based format and the potential for one-to-many communication (Larsen et al., 2008 ). Other tasks which may require significant coordination or a large amount of social context and nuance may be better suited for meetings. The degree to which organizations will rely on emails as a complement to or substitute for meeting activity as they transition remotely remains an open question.

To understand how organizations changed their digital communication patterns in response to the pandemic, we analyzed a large sample of aggregated meeting and email meta-data from 3,143,270 users across 21,478 firms in 16 international cities that have been affected by official lockdown orders, reported in Appendix, Figures B1 and B2 . From this meta-data, our data provider, which licenses digital communications services to organizations around the world, built measures of the communication frequency for email (the average count of distinct, internal, and external emails and the average count of recipients) and meetings (the average count of meetings, average meeting duration, and the average count of attendees per meeting). Additionally, we measured broader changes to work patterns, such as the average length of workday (measured from the first communication to the last communication in a given day), the cumulative number of hours people spent in meetings, and the average number of emails sent outside of regular business hours, reported in the Appendix, Table A1 . More details on our measures are reported in the Appendix, Note A6 .

Our data provider cleaned the data in several ways to increase the likelihood that calendar metadata reflected actual organizational activity. First, they dropped meetings with only one attendee or meetings that lasted longer than 8 h since those meetings overwhelmingly corresponded with out-of-office notices or people blocking out personal time on their calendar rather than formal meeting activity. Next, they excluded meetings with greater than 250 attendees to filter out company-wide notices and spam invitations. Lastly, they only provided internal emails based on correspondence between two employees who shared the same corporate domain address (e.g. @company.com).

The data provider matched meeting and email metadata to a list of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). For each MSA in our data, we included the central business district of the cities and surrounding suburbs and townships within the MSA with populations greater than 100,000 people. The 16 major cities included in the sample were selected based on the following criteria: (1) each city must average at least 50,000 active users across 500 firms in the time period examined; (2) each city must have implemented a clear, government-mandated order for non-essential employees to work from home; and (3) these orders had to take effect around the same time (between March 8 and 28) to more explicitly control for time-specific factors related to the organizational response to COVID-19. The third criteria resulted in the exclusion of Asian cities from the analysis since their lockdowns took place at least a month before other major international cities. Each variable used in this analysis was computed by our provider and delivered to us pre-aggregated at the MSA-level. At no point did the research team have access to personally identifiable or user-level data.

In a secondary data set, our provider calculated and shared email communication aggregates at the industry (SIC-1) and organization size level (i.e., small <250 users, medium 250–500 users, large 1000–2500 users, and enterprise 2500+ users) for each of the 16 MSAs included in this study. Our email provider was unable to provide the industry-level data for meeting measures. We use this dataset only to show that our results are consistent across industry and size levels in various robustness tests.

For the main set of results, we used average meeting and email activity aggregated at the MSA level in the post-lockdown period relative to the pre-lockdown period. We used the following specification for our first set of results, which uses a single dummy variable to test the overall difference between pre- and post-lockdown periods for each outcome variable.

To analyze the change in email and meeting measures over different weeks, we used the following specification:

where y i , t are logged email and meeting data at the MSA i and day t level, post is an indicator variable for the period after lockdown, Dτ t is a week indicator variable, relative to the lockdown week, γ i are MSA-level fixed effects, d t are day of the week indicator variables (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.), and u i,t is an error-term. Note that MSA-level fixed effects were selected since that was the level at which our communication data was aggregated by our data provider. MSA-level fixed effects control for average differences across MSAs for the outcome of interest, enabling us to report within-MSA changes.

The “lockdown week” is the 7-day period that includes the lockdown date at its center. Every prior and subsequent week indicator is defined relative to that week. The base week for our regression is defined as one week before the lockdown week since many organizations began making arrangements days in advance of official lockdowns based on news of impending policy changes. Email and meeting measures do not display evidence of a pre-trend in the weeks leading up to the base week and lockdown week. All standard errors are clustered at the MSA level (see Tables 2a , b for details).

We use an OLS regression-based event study to examine how these measures vary before and after government-mandated lockdowns. Our method is similar to other approaches in the literature used to evaluate event-related changes in an outcome of interest (e.g. Henderson, 1990 ; Kothari and Warner, 2007 ). We group digital communication measures into three categories of interest: meeting, email, and work–life balance.

We find an increase in the total meeting count (+12.9% [CI: +11.4% to +14.4%], +0.8 meetings per person per day) Footnote 1 , a decrease in the average meeting duration (−20.1% [−23.0% to −17.1%], −12.1 min per meeting), and an increase in the average number of attendees (+13.5% [+10.6% to +16.5%], +2.1 attendees per meeting). Our results suggest that organizations in the post-lockdown period had shorter, more frequent meetings with more attendees than in the prior period. Additionally, we find that the net effect of all these changes was to significantly reduce the total number of hours employees spent in meetings during the post-lockdown period (−11.5% [−14.3% to −8.7%], −18.6 min per person per day). We report these models in the Appendix in Table A2 .

After assessing the overall post-lockdown changes in meeting activities, we conducted more granular tests to understand how these changes unfolded week by week. Using a similar regression specification, but with dummy variables corresponding to each week, we computed the weekly change in digital communication patterns following the enacted lockdown relative to the base week. In this weekly specification, we find consistent increases in the size and count of meetings and consistent decreases in the length of meetings each week after the lockdown date. The cumulative effect of these changes is a decrease in the total amount of hours employees spend in meetings each week after the lockdown date, relative to the base week. We report the coefficients, denoting the weekly changes in communication relative to the base week and corresponding standard errors, in Table 2a , and graph these coefficients in Fig. 1 .

Depiction of the coefficients from Table 2a .

Turning to emails, we find that two types of email communication increased in the post-lockdown period. First, the average number of internal emails sent increased (+5.2% [+3.0% to +7.6%], +1.4 emails per person per day). Additionally, there is a significant increase in the average number of recipients included in emails sent in the post-lockdown period (+2.9% [+0.3% to +5.5%], +0.25 recipients per email sent). However, external emails did not significantly change in the post-lockdown period. We report the coefficients, denoting the weekly changes in communication relative to the base week and corresponding standard errors, in Table 2b , and graph these coefficients in Fig. 2 . To better understand how these results unfold over time, we analyze our main email measures up to nine months after the initial lockdowns. Appendix Table A5 depicts results from our main specification for all email measures, controlling for industry-level fixed effects. We find that, even 9 months after the lockdown, the total number of internal emails sent remains significantly higher than pre-lockdown levels. However, the average number of email recipients appears to return to pre-lockdown levels by the third month. We interpret this as evidence that certain changes to communication activity, such as increases in the total number of emails sent, reflect enduring changes to digital communication that are associated with the semi-permanent adoption of remote work. In contrast, other changes, such as increases in the average number of recipients per email, are less durable and fade in the immediate aftermath of lockdowns.

Depiction of the coefficients from Table 2b .

We find that the average workday span, defined as the span of time from the first to the last email sent or meeting attended in a 24-h period, increased by +48.5 min (+8.2% [+7.1% to +9.3%]). Consistent with longer workdays, emails sent after business hours also increased (+8.3% [+4.0% to +12.7%], +0.63 emails per person per day). We report these details in the Appendix in Table A2 . Even in the weekly specification, the employee’s average workday span remains elevated, higher than pre-pandemic levels, for the eight post-lockdown weeks examined in the weekly specification. Furthermore, the total number of emails sent increases steeply the week of the lockdown and then decreases persistently in the weeks after, returning to pre-lockdown levels around week four.

We run numerous analyses with different weighting and aggregation schemes to ensure that our results are consistent across specifications. All results, except for email recipients, are robust to weighting regressions by the total number of users in each MSA, as described in the Appendix in Table A3 . Next, we run additional analyses using weekly instead of daily aggregations, reported in the Appendix in Table A4 . These models are consistent with our main set of findings, regardless of the level of aggregation chosen. Furthermore, in additional analysis (available upon request), we examined whether the changes in communication activity observed in the data were driven by specific sectors of the economy, but found similar responses, both in terms of sign and magnitude, across various industries.

Interestingly, Europe is more negatively impacted by the lockdowns than other cities in our sample when controlling for relevant holidays. However, this could be due to a greater intensity of the lockdown regulations in these areas, disrupting life more in the first two months of the pandemic. It is also possible that pre-existing work–life balance norms in European countries contributed to this result due to a ceiling effect. That is, cities with low baseline levels of communication, perhaps owing to stronger work–life balance norms, have more room to increase their email and meeting activity than cities with higher baseline levels of communication. Lastly, we confirm that the user base remains similar throughout this period and share a graphical depiction of meeting and email users in the Appendix in Figs. B1 and B2 .

Careful inspection of these weekly results reveals that some communication patterns began to change even earlier than one week before the lockdown. To account for this variation, we reran the main analysis, but set the reference category to 8 weeks before the lockdown date to formally test whether meeting and email trends 8 weeks into a lockdown were different from the trends observed 8 weeks before the lockdown. We share these results in the Appendix in Figs. B3 and B4 . With few exceptions, we find that the broad trends in meeting and email activity described above hold regardless of whether the reference week is 8 weeks before the lockdown or one week before the lockdown.

Furthermore, we share additional analysis by MSA and industry. We graph each measure by MSA in the Appendix in Figs. B5 – B14 . Lastly, in Appendix Fig. B15 , we provide an industry analysis showing the heterogeneous effect of industry on email intensity, based on the additional industry-level data provided in the secondary data set. This analysis confirms that our results do not vary much by industry. The only industry differentially affected by the pandemic lockdown is the services industry (excluding financial services). In the services industry, we find that email communication does not recover as quickly as other industries after the lockdown, possibly suggesting a reduction in demand for in-person services.

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing employees worldwide to work from home, organizations have had to make challenging and urgent decisions about how best to utilize digital communication technology in the absence of a shared physical workspace. Our paper examines two important types of digital communication—meeting and email activity—and shows that on average, employees significantly changed their communication behavior in response to the pandemic. While our results are more descriptive in nature and cannot rule out several competing explanations for the observed findings, the existing literature does help us to identify which explanations are most plausible. Overall, our results suggest that the organizations made communication trade-offs in response to the pandemic, increasing meeting and email activity in terms of frequency and the number of people included, but decreasing the overall time spent doing these activities. While our data cannot speak to whether these changes were due to explicit strategic managerial decisions or a consequence of organizations transitioning to remote work, these patterns are consistent with the idea that virtual forms of communication were leveraged to replace the face-to-face interaction typical in an office setting in a way that might have freed up time for employees to get work accomplished throughout the day.

Though an increase in the quantity of virtual communication is perhaps unsurprising in the middle of a pandemic, the extant literature could not have predicted the specific ways in which this occurred. The literature does, however, help us interpret our findings. For example, despite the potential drawbacks of large meetings or emails with many recipients, these forms of communication practices may help synchronize how information is shared (Allen et al., 2015 ; Cohen et al., 2011 ; Mroz et al., 2018 ). Furthermore, expanding the number of email recipients and meeting attendees increases the likelihood that important information is received by all relevant individuals in an organization (Skovholt and Svennevig, 2006 ).

The hypothesis that organizations were forced to leverage meetings and emails as an imperfect substitute to face-to-face interaction is plausible. Still, one finding that should be explained is why internal emails increased (and remained significantly higher than pre-lockdown levels even 9 months after lockdowns), but external email communication did not. One possibility is that communication turned inward as organizations adapted to remote work. Organizations working remotely for the first time likely have a greater need to use email for internal activities (e.g. synchronizing work activity, enforcing accountability, and communicating information), than for external activities, such as establishing new external partnerships. Another important possibility is that a meaningful amount of external communication in our dataset consisted of mass emails sent out as part of newsletters or promotional campaigns, rather than unique external communication efforts with specific individuals. If these mass emails were automated before the pandemic, and therefore not subject to changes in remote working status, then we would not expect to observe significant increases in external communication.

In addition to observing increases in internal email communication, we also observed important changes to meeting activity. Specifically, we found an increase in the frequency and size of meetings, which can be explained by the fact that virtual work limits opportunities for in-office social engagement and serendipitous information sharing with other employees. Managers may have found it necessary to correct this problem by increasing the frequency of “all-hands” meetings for their teams or departments to overcome feelings of social isolation (Carletta et al., 2000 ; Nilles, 1994 ) and maintain a sense of identification with the organization (Wiesenfeld et al., 1999 ).

The observed decline in meeting length is also consistent with research on virtual teams, which finds that employees find it harder to stay engaged in long, virtual meetings compared to in-person meetings (Wasson, 2004 ; Cummins, 2020 ). Additionally, natural distractions at home which compete for attention, such as demands from family and household responsibilities, may make it even harder to focus during a working day (Cummins, 2020 ; Davis and Green, 2020 ). The collective effect of these demands on attention may have motivated managers to shorten the average length of meetings to avoid overwhelming employees adjusting to working-from-home.

The joint effect of having both an increase in meeting frequency and a decrease in meeting length suggests an interesting possibility that meetings may have become more difficult to coordinate efficiently while organizations adapted to working remotely. A greater quantity of meetings involving a greater number of people implies a substantial requirement for coordination among attendees to schedule these meetings. For at least some of these employees, it would be impossible to schedule meetings consecutively so as to minimize interruption to work activity. From the perspective of employee well-being, the total amount of time spent in meetings is less important than the total number of interruptions (Rogelberg et al., 2006 ). For employees involved in highly interdependent tasks (Barrick et al., 2002 ), an increased quantity of meetings may result in greater distraction and deterioration of well-being over time, even if the net amount of time spent in these meetings is decreasing.

Consistent with this possibility, our findings also point to a spillover of virtual communication beyond normal working hours. Employees worked an average of 48.5 min longer after COVID-19 lockdowns, and were significantly more likely to send emails outside of standard working hours. This points to yet another trade-off organizations should be sensitive to—the decision to expand the scope and frequency of communications, with all its attendant coordination costs, is synonymous with a decision to expand the working day for employees. Even with reduced time spent in meetings, the work demands brought about by the pandemic, coupled with personal demands that are always close at hand, likely made it hard to meet obligations within the bounds of normal working hours.

One explanation for why employees might be working more while working from home comes from research on non-traditional work schedules. This literature has shown that managers have a tendency to view employees who take advantage of flexible working hours as less productive or committed to the organization (Chung, 2020 ; Kaplan et al., 2018 ). Given this perception, employees in virtual teams tend to work longer hours to overcome this “flexibility stigma” and to signal progress on certain assignments by communicating more regularly with managers (Chung, 2020 ; Golden and Eddleston, 2020 ). Another worrying possibility is that workers who would rather not work remotely consider having an office away from their home as essential to keeping their work and personal lives separate. For these workers, working from home may blur the distinction between work and other aspects of their personal life, which may result in them working longer hours without being fully aware of doing so.

Some employees may work a similar amount of time, but spread across an irregular schedule, increasing the span of their workdays. Employees working from home, for example, may decide to take periodic breaks throughout the day to accommodate idiosyncratic demands associated with home life (e.g. childcare, spousal responsibilities, etc.) and compensate for these breaks by working later. Because our measure of the working day is computed by taking the length of time between the first and last meeting or email each day, it does not necessarily capture the total amount or intensity of working time. Despite this caveat, the possibility that employees’ working hours have become less regular is still an important feature of work during the pandemic, as there are well-studied consequences to deviating from formal, organization-wide working schedules (e.g. Piasna, 2018 ; Joshi and Bogen, 2007 ).

In addition to estimating the effects of COVID-related lockdowns on patterns of digital communication, our results also offer a few relevant insights for managers and leaders within organizations. First, our data show that organizations are not merely reactive, but remarkably proactive to external shocks. Organizations of different sizes, in different industries, in different parts of the world, changed their patterns of digital communication at least one full week, on average, before government-imposed lockdowns. That is, our findings show that organizations can (and did) rapidly adjust their communication patterns in anticipation of formal policy requirements or response to local environmental conditions (e.g., the increasing spread of the virus in workplaces.) This degree of responsiveness is surprising when juxtaposed with the literature showing that many organizations can be slow to adapt and change, especially as they become large or are required to respond to rapid political and regulatory change (Woods, 2020 ; Wright et al., 2004 ).

Second, our findings point to the utility of passively collected digital communications data. It is worth noting that this study would not have been possible 20 years ago. Researchers would have had to infer the organizational impact of the crisis via survey data shared from a smaller number of organizations, and such data would have taken months, if not years, to collect. Today, however, because of the widespread use of calendar platforms by organizations that automatically collect communications meta-data, it is now possible to glimpse the impact of any event on organizational communication in real-time (Salganik et al., 2020 ). Because we wanted to ensure our results apply to a large number of organizations, we limited our analysis to broad communication measures shared across organizations worldwide. However, communications data can be collected at a much more granular level than the measures used in this paper. For example, Yang et al. ( 2021 ), in a study that complements our broader approach, examines network data at greater depth for a single firm to show that collaboration networks have become more siloed since the adoption of remote work.

Lastly, our findings have implications for managers by highlighting the importance of considering the trade-offs in organizational communication. Shortly after COVID-related lockdowns were imposed, managers found themselves in charge of newly remote workers and had to decide, in real-time, how best to communicate with employees. Difficult decisions had to be made regarding how many emails to send to employees, how many people to include on meeting invitations, and how frequently to schedule “check-in” meetings to heighten accountability. While our data cannot speak to whether managers consciously made these decisions, our data do show meaningful trade-offs in the dimensions of communication activity. In the context of meetings, organizations varied along different dimensions of meeting activity: the number of meetings, the size of meetings, and the length of meetings. While our paper focuses on the short-term response to the emergency situation created by the pandemic, in the long run, the correct balance of these parameters may vary across organizations. How managers and organizations proactively think about the ideal balance of these parameters (if at all) is an important question for future research.

Limitations

While our data establish that employees changed their email and meeting activity patterns in response to lockdowns, our findings are not without limitations. First, our data only represent a subset of the possible communication occurring within a firm. Non-email communication, such as messaging via consumer or other business communication platforms, and informal meetings not scheduled via calendar invitations, are not reflected in our data. Our analysis does not capture these cross-platform substitutions outside our provider’s data. Therefore, this paper’s findings should be interpreted cautiously as the effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on more formal digital communication patterns, the email and meeting activity facilitated through the company’s communication platform, rather than the net effect of all communication occurring within a firm. As such, other types of communication (e.g. watercooler conversations, instant messenger, phone calls, etc.) were not captured by our email provider’s email and calendar system and were not analyzed in our study. As a result, our analysis may miss important ways in which organizations responded to the pandemic by increasing their use of non-email and meeting channels. For example, organizations might have reacted to the loss of serendipitous in-person conversation by increasing their use of other business communication platforms, like Slack or Microsoft Teams, which are not captured in our data.

A second limitation is that at least three distinct events or phenomena can occur in concert with COVID-related lockdowns: firms transition to remote work, there is a shock to demand due to macroeconomic forces, and behavior is changed for non-work-related reasons. Even controlling for industry and firm size, we cannot disentangle which of these forces is responsible for the effects observed in the paper. As such, the effects documented in the paper should be interpreted as the joint effect of all the forces that co-occur with COVID-19 lockdowns. Related to this, we treat all government-mandated lockdowns as similar in terms of their influence on organizational communication. In reality, firms may have responded to lockdowns in distinct and important ways. For example, Yang et al. ( 2021 ) note that some firms may have adopted a “hybrid work model” in response to the pandemic in which employees spend part of their week working remotely and the other part working in the office. Other organizations are more likely to adopt a “mixed-mode” model in which some employees work remotely full-time, and other employees are full-time office workers. Whether a firm adopted a hybrid working model, a mixed-mode model, or something more extreme has important implications for assessing the impact of remote work on organizational communication.

Third, even though we take great lengths to ensure that calendar data reflects real organizational activity, there is still the possibility that some fraction of our meeting meta-data may not perfectly capture organizational work. For our meeting length variable, a similar problem occurs if a meeting lasts longer or shorter than scheduled on the calendar. The extent to which meeting length, frequency, and size are incorrectly estimated will likely vary substantially across firms, but we have no reason to expect that this bias will vary systematically in a particular direction rendering our estimates unreliable. Measurement error of this sort also does not diminish the practical significance of the results.

Given the unprecedented nature of the changes wrought by COVID-19, it was unclear from the outset how employees would adapt their communication patterns as they transitioned to working from outside their offices. We find that COVID-related lockdowns are associated with: (1) an increase in the total volume of meeting and email activity; (2) a decrease in the average length of meetings; and (3) an increase in the span of the workday. We also found an increase in the average size of meetings and a decrease in the total amount of time spent in meetings after the implementation of COVID-19 lockdowns.

In analyzing digital communication patterns across a large number of firms and regions, we build upon an emerging literature that uses communication meta-data to measure the relationship between patterns of communication and organizational outcomes (Impink et al., 2020 ; Polzer et al., 2018 ; Kleinbaum et al., 2013 ; Srivastava et al., 2018 ). More substantively, we contribute to the literature on virtual work, which has traditionally focused on the impact to organizations when a small subset of employees voluntarily transition to remote work (e.g., Bloom et al., 2013 ; Choudhury et al., 2019 ). Our findings clarify how core communicative functions in an organization change when remote work is implemented under less auspicious conditions—when the transition is mandatory and involves entire organizations.

Data availability

Please contact the corresponding author: Jeffrey Polzer ([email protected]) to be provided with information on how to contact the email provider in our study to apply for access to use the data or to be provided with the code (R and STATA) used to run our analyses.

The details reported in parentheticals are the following: the percentage change of the outcome variable compared to pre-lockdown levels computed from the regression, the 95% confidence interval for this percentage change, and the raw change in the outcome variable in its original units.

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DeFilippis, E., Impink, S.M., Singell, M. et al. The impact of COVID-19 on digital communication patterns. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9 , 180 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01190-9

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What is Virtual Communication (+ 6 Best Practices)

More and more people across the globe depend on virtual communication . Even though remote work has its negative sides, the positive ones seem to be much more significant and employees are not ready to give them up. 

Hence, virtual communication in both our personal and professional lives is the new normal, and we need to get used to it. 

In this blog, we will cover some of the biggest struggles employees face with virtual communication but also the best practices for eliminating those. 

About Virtual Communication and Its Emergence

Virtual communication is any communication that happens over technology rather than in person. Such communication can happen in real-time (synchronously) and asynchronously. Today, there are plenty of ways to communicate virtually in the workplace : via video conferencing tools, emails, instant messaging solutions, or using other employee communication and collaboration apps . 

With the emergence of remote and hybrid work , virtual communication has become the main mean of communication for many organizations and employees across the world. Moreover, this number is projected to keep growing in the future as most employees prefer working remotely. 

According to the latest research by Buffer , an astonishing 97% of people would recommend remote work to others, 90% of people rate their remote working experience as positive, and 72% are already a part of a fully remote or remote-first work environment. 

But how are companies addressing the downsides of remote work and virtual communications? What are some of the biggest challenges and how to overcome them? 

Keep reading to find out!

💡 Related: 8 Tips To Boost Employee Communications At Your Company

Top 7 Virtual Communication Challenges to Tackle

In the previously mentioned research, employees were asked about what has changed since they started working remotely. The majority (54%) of employees said “ how I communicate and collaborate ”. This change was on the top of their list. 

But what are some challenges employees face because of this change?

Poor asynchronous communication

Virtual communication doesn’t work without asynchronous communication . Organizations need to understand that not everything can be discussed and resolved in real-time. 

Unstructured workplace communication can be detrimental to our performance – people spend more time hopping from one meeting to another or replying to messages than focusing solely and mindfully on their tasks.

Communicating async, however, should have its rules and best practices to follow. Even though 62% of remote companies still don’t have an asynchronous-first work policy, 52% of employees would like their organizations to be async-first. 

💡 If you are looking for inspiration, check out this great example by Gitlab !

Information loss (poor access or information overload)

When it comes to remote work, we often hear that we need to overcommunicate. However, things are not so simple. If done poorly, over-communication can lead to information overload !

And information overload can be the biggest reason why information gets lost . So instead of just overwhelming people with tons of information, a better approach would be to make information more personalized and relevant to employees. 

Another reason why information gets lost in virtual communication is poor access to information, documents, and conversations. In most companies, crucial information lives in different places: intranets, drives, emails, chats, project management tools, and websites, to name a few. This makes it hard for people to find the information that they need. 

Eliminating these challenges can have a substantial impact on your employees’ wellbeing , engagement, and productivity. 

Cross-departmental silos

Team communication is crucial for any project success, but more and more we also depend on proper cross-functional collaboration to achieve great results. 

In fact, over 29% of employees say that poor internal communication is the main reason why projects fail. 

Virtual communication makes cross-departmental collaboration much harder . This is particularly true for fully remote organizations in which employees never see each other face to face. 

Ignoring other people’s needs and goals is easier when you never see a person. This usually results in lack of alignment and broken teamwork. 

💡 Learn about 11 reasons why business communication is crucial for company success !

Sense of loneliness and lack of belongingness

Virtual-only communication can result in a sense of loneliness among people. In fact, the biggest downsides of remote work, according to HBR research , are burnout and loneliness. 

Water cooler chats (or water cooler talks) is what happens when colleagues take a break from work and socialize with each other. 

This is a chance for people to talk about less stressful things, like hobbies and personal interests—fun topics not associated with work.

When we depend on virtual communication solely, these talks don’t happen. Scheduling a call to just chat about something with a colleague may seem odd to people. 

On the other hand, strong connections at work can go a long way in retaining great talent . When people form strong relationships and friendships at work, they are more likely to have lower turnover rates . 

Lack of organizational alignment

Research shows that nine out of ten companies fail to execute their strategic vision and that 95% of employees , on average, are unaware of or do not understand their company’s strategy. Effective alignment has been rare even before the COVID-19 pandemic, but virtual communication makes it even more challenging to achieve. 

As nicely put by Katpa CEO Alex Raymond “alignment requires a common understanding of the mission of the organization , and consistency across each and every objective and plan”. 

To achieve such alignment, effective workplace communication is key . Yes, we can put together a set of shared KPIs and hope that everyone works towards the same goals, but without good communication, alignment can’t be achieved. 

Cultural differences and different communication skills

If you work remotely, you have probably already noticed that some people sound rude in their messages. The truth is, they probably come from a culture where people are more direct. 

Understanding and assessing these cultural differences is important in virtual working environments. In some organizations, HR teams are responsible for identifying these differences and educating people about them. 

💡 Learn about the most important communication skills and how to improve your interpersonal communications skills . 

Decrease in employee engagement

All the above-mentioned negative sides of virtual communication can lead to lower employee engagement levels. They all have a significant impact on shaping one’s experience in the workplace , and we already know that employee experience directly influences employee motivation and engagement . 

The biggest challenge here is that spotting these lower engagement levels is not so easy in virtual workplaces. Not seeing people makes it harder to spot and understand the reasons behind their job dissatisfaction. 

6 Ways to Make Virtual Communication in the Workplace Work

Now that we have covered some of the biggest reasons why virtual communication can be challenging, let’s do a deep dive into how to make it more efficient. 

Set some communication rules and communicate best practices

Organizations that have just switched to the virtual means of communication are struggling to adapt . Employees who are used to having meetings may have a hard time adjusting to remote work . So defining and encouraging best practices for virtual communication can have a big impact on eliminating the biggest communication barriers in the workplace . 

It is on employers to enable their people and teach them how to best operate in virtual environments. Otherwise, endless meetings may result in a significant loss in productivity . 

Consider implementing a regular internal newsletter about remote work best practices. Think about implementing a no-meeting day, for example. Create a designated channel or a virtual workspace where employees can share their own tips and advice. 

📹 Check out our Masterclass about how to eliminate communication barriers at work!

Make content more relevant (hyper-personalization)

Information overload and content irrelevancy are the biggest reasons why people miss important information and why organizational communication fails. Even before this pandemic, 74% of people had a feeling that they were missing important company information. That number is even bigger now. 

More than ever, organizations need to personalize workplace content and make it hyper-personalized to the individuals. 

Scaling this process, however, is impossible without the right technology that enables robust employee filtering and segmentation . Employees should be served content that is relevant to their job roles, locations, preferences, interests, and other criteria. 

Only then, you can be sure to deliver the right content to the right employee at the right time. 

Enable seamless team (and cross-functional) collaboration

Teams and departments should have designated virtual workspaces and channels to communicate and collaborate on their projects and socialize. 

According to previously mentioned research, 28% of remote workers wish their employer offered more opportunities for them to connect with their coworkers. And 34% of workers wish their employer would help them better connect with their colleagues for work. 

While popular instant messaging and chat platforms help teams communicate better , they don’t offer additional features and functionalities for better collaboration and project management. 

Remember, virtual communication requires a more structured approach to project planning, development, and execution. 

Access to the right technology is critical here!

Provide an intuitive and easily accessible central content hub

People in your organization should never feel like they are left in the dark. Even if you don’t have a physical working space, you should try to recreate one . 

Fortunately, modern social intranets provide an easy and intuitive way for employees to stay up to date, expand and share knowledge, engage with various company initiatives, and get to know their fellow coworkers better. 

Show empathy and listen carefully

The most efficient way to improve virtual communication and employee engagement in your organization is by asking employees directly for their feedback . Regular employee surveys have, therefore, become a must for hybrid and remote workplaces . 

Use short surveys to capture your people’s current state of mind, understand their concerns, and collect their ideas. 

However, asking without acting is worse than not asking at all. In order to act, you need to measure!

Measure and act!

Today, many employers distribute regular employee surveys . The more important step, however, is to analyze the results and make data-driven decisions for improvement . 

If done manually, this can be a time-consuming process, and this is why many organizations neglect it or don’t devote enough time analyzing employees’ feedback.

With the latest employee engagement technology enabled with artificial intelligence, this process becomes much more efficient and faster.

Interesting Facts About Virtual Communication at Work

• 49% of workers use a messaging or communication app every day for their work (including 64% of those in customer-facing roles). 98% of those said messaging + communication apps were important to their work (74% considered them very important).
• 32%  of people find themselves thinking, “this meeting could have been an email” all or most of the time.
• Biggest issues with virtual meetings compared to in-person meetings are mainly centered around relatable issues and translate across industries.
• Technology issues (e.g. internet connectivity issues),  (41% overall)
• Getting all attendees sorted on  how  best to use the technology  (e.g. how to mute, use the camera), (31% overall) and,
• Virtual meeting  etiquette  (e.g. Attendees not focused/multi-tasking) or lack of engagement (27%)
• 67% of workers  are distracted during virtual meetings.
• 47% of people  prefer in person meetings.
• 55% of workers admit to checking emails during virtual meetings.
• 43% of employees reported that webcams make them more productive with the bulk of the survey reporting medium (31%) or low productivity (26%).

The Role of Technology in Enabling Virtual Communication 

Throughout this blog, we talked multiple times about the role of technology in enabling virtual communication in organizations. 

Moreover, without the right set of communication tools , it is impossible to make remote work work . Creating a virtual working environment in which employees are connected, well-informed, engaged, and productive is challenging but absolutely necessary for ensuring business continuity and company success. 

Employee engagement platforms like Haiilo can help you :

• Create and distribute hyper-personalized content your people will want to read
• Send timely information while avoiding information overload
• Reach every worker with critical information regardless of their nature of work (mobile-first communication)
• Provide a central collaboration hub where people can create, store, and access critical documents in a matter of seconds
• Enable everyone to stay connected via intuitive chat
• Integrate with other workplace tech stack
• Help managers and leaders collect critical feedback from their employees and get valuable insights for improvement

Curious to learn more? Check out our report on IC trends in 2023

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Virtual Teams and Communication Tools Essay

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• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
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Implementing proper communication tools is important in the settings of virtual teamwork. Among the communication tools that I could use in order to facilitate the efficiency of the virtual team is video conferencing tools and file sharing tools. I think that they enhance the productivity of the team and contribute to faster and more comfortable work. They will help to establish a connection between coworkers and give more opportunities to collaborate while working remotely.

The closest substitute for an in-person interview is video conferencing technology. Video meetings are excellent for holding remote training sessions, presentations, and interviews (Laitinen & Valo, 2018). Video conferencing is a cutting-edge and well-liked method used by businesses to digitally connect people in distant areas. Companies can bring together personnel who are dispersed over the globe without having them physically meet. Team members are able to communicate, interact, and collaborate via connecting through technology. One of the video conferencing tools that I would implement into work is called Google Meet. With Google Meet, one can hold online video conferences with other people without having to download any additional software. Some advantages of this specific tool are that it is user-friendly, smoothly works in pair with Google Chrome, allows users to join from any part of the world, and it can be exposed from different devices at the same time.

I would apply this tool to recruit new talents, establish connections, and cut expenses by simultaneously increasing efficiency. That will considerably contribute to the effective performance of the virtual team and the company as a whole. Companies in the modern business environment have access to the best people on the planet. Businesses are now able to hire people in far-flung locations and form work groups using online communication thanks to technology technologies. These workers may easily engage by speaking face-to-face, seeing each other on their computer screens, and using video conferencing. By enabling visual and audible interaction, video conferencing eliminates many barriers to communication and fosters interpersonal relationships.Team members are supported, and their working relationships are strengthened by video conferencing (Laitinen & Valo, 2018). With the introduction of video conferencing, team members may now participate fully in meetings and communicate with one another without these problems. Video conferencing promotes information sharing, issue solving, participant updates, and meeting agenda execution. It enables team members to meet frequently and consistently and supports the majority of meeting kinds. This encourages effective teamwork and information exchange.

The next tool I would like to implement into work with the virtual team is a file-sharing tool. It is simple to share files and documents amongst users thanks to filing sharing software. Additionally, a user may frequently add notes and comments to the files, which other team members can view and respond to. The name of the specific file-sharing tool that I personally would use is Stormboard. Teams can construct an online shared workplace with the use of the cloud-based online whiteboard and collaboration tool Stormboard. Users can handle documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms using Stormboard. To work together on these files, they can also extend invitations; moreover, everything takes place in one single location. The reason why I would choose this tool is that they are good at supporting document editing and effective at organizing content. In addition, it can be effectively used in the activities of team brainstorming.

I would apply file-sharing tools for managing information and knowledge in virtual teams. Next, it can be applied to creating reports within the team and sharing feedback. Sensitive information and large files that can’t be transmitted via email are the two main reasons why file-sharing platforms are essential for knowledge management in virtual teams. This kind of software enables team members to share huge files and can offer a safe communication route for confidential information (Morrison-Smith & Ruiz, 2020). Co-creation tools for documents enable collaboration among team members and are useful for producing reports or spreadsheets as well as collecting feedback on deliverables in a single integrated document.

Laitinen, K., & Valo, M. (2018). Meanings of communication technology in virtual team meetings: Framing technology-related interaction. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies , 111 , 12-22.

Morrison-Smith, S., & Ruiz, J. (2020). Challenges and barriers in virtual teams: a literature review. SN Applied Sciences , 2 (6), 1-33.

• Definition of Lie in Ericsson’s “The Ways We Lie”
• Aspects of Persuasive Communication
• The Excel Spreadsheets Formatting
• WebEx Web Conferencing and Online Meeting Services
• Meaning of Video Conferencing in a Company
• Plagiarism and Originality in Personal Understanding
• Communication – Communicating in the Digital Age
• Public Speaking as the Art of Communication
• Professional Relationships and Communication Qualities
• Analysis of Four Types of Listening
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Top 12 Best Practices for Virtual Communication to Implement Today

(10 min read)

In today’s digital world and remote work, effective virtual communication has become a very important skill for maintaining smooth collaboration and building meaningful connections.

Many individuals and organisations find it hard to communicate effectively, which causes misunderstandings and a lack of engagement. But don’t worry; this blog shares the best practices for communicating and interacting with professionals in virtual environments. Make your online conversation better, simpler, and more interesting by following the tips below.

Understanding Virtual Communication

Virtual communication embodies the exchange of information and ideas between individuals who, despite being physically distant, bridge the gap through digital mediums. This interaction transpires through a diverse array of channels, including emails, phone calls, video conferencing, and social media platforms. With the advent of remote working, virtual communication has burgeoned, offering a conduit to engage with professionals and acquaintances globally.

What are the advantages of virtual communication?

Dive into the various advantages that virtual communication opens up in today’s digital landscape:

• Increase Global Reach: Virtual communication helps businesses and individuals connect and collaborate with people worldwide. This is especially crucial for large businesses working in lots of different countries around the world. Virtual communication also assists businesses in expanding their market reach with potential customers.
• Emergency Communication: Virtual communication is very important for immediate response because it allows organisations to communicate quickly with a larger audience. It can be used to keep other people informed about the urgency, such as by providing updates on the situation, safety instructions, and other ongoing challenges.
• Convenient and Flexible: Using a variety of devices and platforms, virtual communication allows people to engage in meetings or events without leaving the comfort of their homes or workplaces. This convenience and flexibility ensure that communication will take place when needed. Businesses and individuals can both save time and be more accessible.
• Recording and Documentation: Virtual communication can be recorded from anywhere with an internet connection so that it can be accessed and reviewed at any time. Recordings can be used for a range of communication, like business meetings, lectures, presentations, training sessions, interviews, and customer support calls, as they save time, improve efficiency, and provide an accurate record of the discussion.
• Enhance Accessibility: Virtual communication enables people to communicate in a variety of different ways, such as text chat, audio chat, and video chat. This allows people to choose the communication method that works best for them, based on their individual needs and preferences. This is beneficial for people who have difficulty travelling or attending in-person meetings.
• Time and Cost Saving: Virtual communication is time-saving as we don’t have to travel or set up a physical meeting place. It saves businesses a significant amount of travel expenses, such as airfare, hotel accommodations, and meals. It also saves a lot of time, especially for businesses and organisations that have employees and clients all over the world. Overall. Virtual communication helps us use our time better and get more things done.
• Exchanging Data Efficiently: Virtual communication allows us to exchange information in a variety of formats, including text, audio, video, and images. Attendees can easily access and review shared data or information during the meeting or afterward at their convenience. This helps ensure that everyone has access to the necessary information. Sharing information in real-time helps everyone understand better, work together closely, and get things done faster.
• Enhanced Collaboration and Innovation: Virtual communication helps improve collaboration and coordination within teams. Organisations can interact more effectively with their employees by using tools like online whiteboards, shared documents, breakout sessions, and live editing. These online tools allow everyone to share new ideas, feedback, and thoughts. It will also help in addressing any project-related issues.

Best Practices for Virtual Communication

In today’s digital landscape, having a grip on virtual communication is key for smooth interactions and effective collaborations. Here’s how to keep it effective:

1: Be clear and simple.

• When communicating virtually, it’s easy for messages to get tangled up if you use complex words or long sentences.
• Aim for clarity and conciseness to avoid misunderstandings.
• Use straightforward language, keep sentences short, and keep points well organised.
• This way, everyone stays on the same page, and work flows smoothly.

2: Be Professional:

• Virtual communication can sometimes be tricky since it lacks the personal touch of face-to-face interactions.
• Before any virtual meeting or event, check your tech setup, including your computer, microphone, and camera, to avoid glitches.
• Dress appropriately and maintain a professional demeanour, just as you would in an in-person meeting.

3: Maintain eye contact:

• Eye contact, even on a screen, shows that you’re attentive and interested.
• It helps build trust and rapport and keeps the engagement level high.
• It also portrays a sense of confidence and professionalism, which are crucial for effective communication in a virtual setting.

4: Minimize Distractions:

• Distractions can hinder your engagement in virtual conversations. Background noises or busy settings can cause you to miss out on crucial details.
• Opt for a quiet, distraction-free zone to maintain focus and ensure a smooth flow in your virtual interactions.
• This simple step can significantly uplift the quality of your virtual meetings or conferences.

5: Practice Empathy:

• Exhibiting empathy fosters stronger bonds with colleagues, customers, and clients.
• By putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, you grasp their needs better, which in turn nurtures a more positive and productive workspace.
• Empathy also helps in diffusing negative emotions, promoting a harmonious work environment.

6: Engage in Active Listening:

• Active listening is a cornerstone of effective communication, especially in a virtual setting where understanding the discussion is vital.
• It sends a message that you value and appreciate the other person’s input, paving the way for trust and stronger relationships.

7: Leverage Video:

• Utilising video in virtual meetings elevates engagement and fosters a personal connection between participants.
• It keeps you attentive and accountable, as you can see and interact with each other.
• Moreover, video creates a lively digital ambiance, allowing everyone to express themselves more freely.

8: Active Participation:

• Dive into meetings or events by asking questions, offering suggestions, and partaking in discussions. Active engagement not only deepens your understanding but also builds trust with team members.
• It cultivates a collaborative spirit, steering the team towards common organisational goals.

9: Non-verbal Communication:

• In the virtual setup, non-verbal cues like facial expressions and hand gestures can convey your thoughts and emotions clearly.
• For instance, a thumbs up for agreement, a smile to express contentment, or a hand raise to pose a question These gestures can make online conversations more genuine and engaging.

10: Follow Meeting Guidelines:

• Following meeting guidelines fosters a conducive and respectful environment. Common etiquettes include being punctual, muting when not speaking, raising hands before interjecting, and using the chat function for questions.
• Adhering to these guidelines facilitates smooth communication and reflects your respect for everyone’s time.

11: Testing Equipment:

• Ensure your microphone, camera, and screen are working properly before the meeting. A quick test can help iron out any technical glitches, allowing you to focus on the discussion.
• This proactive step enhances your communication experience in virtual setups.

12: Learn and Adapt:

• The ever-evolving tech landscape necessitates continuous learning and adaptation, especially in virtual communication.
• Staying updated with new features on virtual platforms and learning from past interactions help in navigating communication effectively across different groups.

Why is communication important in virtual teams? 

Virtual team communication is crucial, especially when team members are spread across different locations or time zones. Effective communication ensures alignment on goals, tasks, and expectations, fostering unity and a positive culture within the team.

In digital meetings where non-verbal cues are scarce, clear communication becomes even more vital to avoid misunderstandings and ensure successful collaboration.

Moreover, communication is key to project coordination, task delegation, and keeping everyone updated on progress and challenges, ultimately creating a productive and enjoyable work atmosphere.

How Can Businesses Improve Virtual Communication in the Workplace?

Businesses can make virtual communication better in these ways:

• Select the Right Tools: It’s essential to pick tools that align with your communication and collaboration needs. Look for platforms that allow clear audio and video communication, seamless document sharing, and interactive collaborative experiences. These tools should be user-friendly and cater to the varying tech savvy of your team members. Evaluating tools based on their features, ease of use, and the support they offer can significantly impact the effectiveness of virtual communication within your business.
• Provide Training and Support: Providing training helps employees get accustomed to the virtual communication tools and practices. Training can cover areas like writing effective emails, utilising video conferencing software efficiently, and building positive virtual relationships with colleagues. Additionally, having a support system in place for troubleshooting technical issues can alleviate communication barriers and enhance the overall virtual communication experience.
• Set Communication Guidelines: Clear guidelines help in setting the right expectations. Establishing norms around response times, preferred communication channels, and etiquette can foster clarity and consistency in communication. Documenting and sharing these guidelines with all team members ensures everyone is on the same page.
• Regular Updates: Scheduling regular team meetings helps keep everyone informed about progress, challenges, and any other essential updates. A routine check-in fosters a sense of unity, builds trust, and provides a platform for addressing concerns and celebrating achievements.
• Foster Open Communication : Cultivating a culture where employees feel comfortable sharing their ideas, concerns, and feedback is crucial. Encouraging regular interaction among team members can lead to a more friendly and collaborative atmosphere, which in turn enhances the overall virtual communication experience.
• Use a Variety of Tools: Diversifying the tools used for communication can cater to different needs. For instance, video conferencing facilitates face-to-face discussions, messaging apps allow for quick information exchanges, and project management software helps in organising tasks, tracking deadlines, and managing projects efficiently.
• Social Interaction: Businesses can provide opportunities for employees to socialise remotely by organising virtual team-building activities or online social events. When employees socialise with their colleagues, they are more likely to feel supported and engaged. Ultimately, this will lead to greater overall team performance and distant job satisfaction.
• Use Visuals and Graphics: Integrating visuals, infographics, and charts can help convey messages and capture the attention of viewers effectively. All of these elements are specially used to make complex information easier to understand. Visuals and graphics also make communication memorable, appealing, and engaging for your audience.
• Monitor Communication Effectiveness: Tracking communication performance is crucial for businesses as it provides valuable insights into how well messages are being conveyed, received, and understood. Use analytics or feedback tools to track engagement and assess meeting effectiveness. It will help you identify communication gaps that need to be addressed.

Frequently asked questions

Virtual communication skills contribute to better coordination, increase team connections, and create a more positive work environment in remote teams.

Encourage active involvement by allowing everyone an opportunity to speak and using engagement tools like polls or Q&A.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Virtual Communication

Advancements in technology have improved human life in enormous ways, not forgetting virtual communication . This is the kind of communication where people all over the world interact or send messages without meeting physically. Remember, communication is an important aspect of life. Without it, people cannot understand each other nor work towards common good. That is why there is communication in homes, workplaces, governments and even learning institutions.

Today, a variety of apps and services are enabling virtual communication. There are instant messaging , voice calls, video calls, video conferencing and even social media. Such services have not only improved personal life but also done a good job at workplaces. More and more organizations are embracing any latest technology as long as it boosts their communication systems and productivity in the end. Now, virtual communication has its positive and negative side.

Advantages of Virtual Communication

There are many advantages of virtual communication. Here are some of the things to like about this type of communication:

a) Convenience: People or employees can interact with each other from wherever they are. They do not have to meet in person. This reduces frustration, especially when they are busy or caught up in traffic.

b) Time Saving: There is no need for a physical meeting to communicate. Different virtual communication software allows you to pass across whatever information you have from wherever you are. This eventually saves time.

c) Saves Money /Cut Costs: Another advantage of virtual communication is that you are able to reduce transport expenses. Companies cut on operational costs of employees, thus saving more money to be used on other functions.

d) It Is Fast: Virtual communication takes no time to connect with the other person. It is only a click away and you get to convey what you have in mind.

e) Enables Organizations Harness Talent from Anywhere: If people do not have to meet physically, then it means they can work from homes remotely in any continent. This way, an organization is able to amass the best people for the job increasing productivity.

f) Promotes Flexibility: This is essential for busy people who are struggling with work and life balance, for example working mums. Virtual communication helps them work from wherever they are, communicate fast and submit projects on time.

g) Increases Productivity: When time is saved, convenience is present, best talent is harnessed and flexibility is attained, there is definitely an increase in productivity. Employees become more effective and efficient as well.

h) Easily Contacting Colleagues: Employees are able to consult each other very easily and fast. There is no need to move from your desk to the other. This saves time too. That is one of the advantages of virtual communication which you can enjoy when connecting your colleagues.

i) Reduce Need for More Office Space: Virtual communication eliminates the need to create space for employees who can work from home or wherever they are.

j) Reduce Boredom: Working from the same place day in day out is It actually contributes to inefficiency among employees. If you can work on a project from anywhere else apart from the office, the change of environment is good for your body and mind. You will not be that bored.

k) Easily Keeping a Record: The last advantage of virtual communication is that you only need to click a button and you get to record video calls and audio calls. Your phone keeps a record of instant messages. This is unlike face to face communication where wrongful word of mouth can be spread easily.

Disadvantages of Virtual Communication

Everything in the world has its bad side. You need to know the disadvantages of virtual communication. This will help you strategize on how best to communicate virtually.

a) Technical Problems: Virtual communication relies on software, machines and the Internet, which can malfunction at any time. This affects ongoing and scheduled virtual communication endeavors.

b) Absence of Non-verbal Communication: Some virtual communication techniques, like voice calls do not accommodate faces of people. Therefore, it is easy to mistake a sarcastic comment for a genuine one, unless you are very keen. This causes miscommunication.

c) Some Functions Require Face-to-face Communication: Interacting virtually does not solve all communication needs, for instance during crisis. That is why face-to-face conversations will never get outdated.

• Published January 14, 2023
• 7 Minute Read

How to Improve Your Virtual Communication: Tips for Leaders

For most of us, communicating with colleagues through a screen doesn’t come naturally, but we’ve adapted. After the COVID pandemic, we all know now to think about eye contact, mute buttons, unexpected interruptions, and frozen screens.

And though virtual collaboration isn’t the same as sitting together in person around a conference table, it has its benefits, and it isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly clear that compelling and effective virtual communications will remain paramount going forward — for individual leaders, teams, and overall organizational success.

“Today’s leaders at all levels must be able communicate effectively, without a continuous physical presence,” notes Jerry Abrams, who serves on our Partnerships & Innovation team and who developed much of the content in our leading remote & virtual teams training .

Your audience’s perceptions of your virtual persona matter, he notes, because your virtual persona reflects your priorities and values, and shapes your personal leadership brand , which can help you build relationships, influence others, achieve goals, and sustain partnerships. These are all especially important when you’re geographically separated from your colleagues, leading a hybrid workforce or a fully remote team.

“The way your ideas land on others is shaped by the medium, and no one who strives to be a great virtual communicator can afford to ignore their virtual persona.”

“As a telecommuter myself for almost a decade, my biggest fear — and I suspect I’m not alone — is that I’m losing my audience, that I am not engaging them,” says Abrams. “And let’s face it; in the virtual world, if you lose your audience, you’re done.”

Strengthen Your Virtual Persona With Our Virtual Communications Tips

Just as  leaders can work to improve their communication in general, there are a number of simple improvements you can start making today that will have a big impact on your virtual persona.

The result? More effective virtual communications leads to an increased feeling of connectedness between you and your audience.

3 Steps to Ensure Your Virtual Communications Drive Engagement

Our virtual communications tips can help you drive greater engagement with your audiences. Just  focus on these 3 steps to improve your virtual persona, in this order:

• Create immediacy;
• Increase receptivity; and
• Build composure.

(Note: Many of the following virtual communication tips presume that you’re able to stand and move freely within a reasonable area in front of your computer, and that it has a functioning camera, microphone, and speaker.) 

1. First, create immediacy with your virtual communications.

Immediacy refers to the presence, attraction, and warmth your audience perceives  when you’re engaging in virtual communication. In other words, what is the impact you have on your audience? The following actions will improve your immediacy by demonstrating an intense involvement in the conversation:

• Convey enthusiasm about the topic you’re presenting. If you’re bored, your audience will pick up on that.
• Vary the pitch, volume, and pace of your speaking.
• Be “animated” when presenting to and interacting with the audience.
• Speak with your hands too, using gestures to reinforce your words.
• Be aware of and use facial expressions to reinforce your points.
• Increase your use of present tense verbs and inclusive pronouns like “ we ” and “ our .”
• Look directly at the camera for several seconds at a time when speaking.
• Lean in toward the camera to reduce the sense of “distance” between you and the audience.

2. Increase receptivity to your virtual communications.

Receptivity refers to a mutual sense of interest, openness, and trust. Convey a willingness to really listen to your colleagues in the virtual space , as well as an openness to their ideas and suggestions, through the following actions:

• Smile when interacting with a member of the audience.
• Look directly into the camera when listening and responding to a member of the audience to create the impression that you are “facing” them.
• When appropriate, don’t be afraid to laugh along with others, as it signals receptivity.
• Use nods appropriately to acknowledge others’ feelings and thoughts.
• Be honest and authentic.
• Ensure you’re using active listening techniques  and affirming the experiences, problems, and stories of others.

The benefits of a focus on receptivity? You’ll improve your team’s morale while also strengthening your own leadership image , which will ultimately lead to greater success at landing your message and achieving your goals.

3. Build composure for more effective virtual communications.

If you feel calm and relaxed when engaging in virtual communication, your audience will sense your composure.  Alternatively, when you’re visibly paying attention to yourself, your appearance, or your own thoughts, your audience will sense your distraction and feel a lack of confidence in your authority. The following behaviors convey to your audience that you feel relaxed, confident, and composed:

• Be aware of your body language. Avoid holding your posture rigid, frequently shifting, or appearing tense.
• Refrain from “nervous” actions like playing with your hair or fidgeting.
• Maximize your speaking fluency by eliminating repetitions and pause-fillers like um, er, ah, etc.
• Speak at an audible, but not extremely loud, level so that your volume doesn’t detract from your message.
• Be appropriately “animated” by tailoring your nonverbal behaviors to reinforce your message and content.

It helps to think of building composure as simply increasing your “stage presence” through rehearsal.  After all, there are several parallels between the performing arts and virtual communications — one of them being, the more you practice, the better you’ll get and the more comfortable you’ll feel.

“Several coaches put it this way — amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong!” adds Abrams.

So if you really want to take your virtual communications to the next level, try recording yourself and then honestly evaluating your performance. Whatever you notice most, start working there to improve.

One additional virtual communication tip to help you build your composure: Before performers go on stage, they’ll often take a moment to close their eyes and visualize an experience that brought forward an emotion they want to project. This trick works in a virtual setting, as well.

“For example, when trying to convey warmth or enthusiasm, take a moment before you start your session to recall a topic, event, or time when you really had a strong feeling of warmth toward others — or felt a strong feeling of enthusiasm for something you were saying or doing,” says Abrams.

“As you visualize the experience, pay attention to all the various feelings and sensations you can recall, including sights, sounds, and smells. These memories help you ground your virtual persona in real experience and add authenticity to your virtual communications.”

That authenticity is key, by the way. We’ve found that creating authentic connections is one of the  3 keys to unlocking the benefits of online learning for leadership development. In our experience, that’s what helps facilitators “reach through the screen” and truly engage participants actively in our virtual leadership programs .

Access Our Webinar!

Watch our webinar, How to Practice Authentic Communication in a Virtual Space Through the Power of Listening , and learn specific actions to take — and avoid — in order to improve your listening skills and reduce conflict while communicating virtually.

Upskill Virtual Communication Skills for Yourself & Your Team

Start by assessing your own virtual communication effectiveness with our quiz.

As a leader, you’re responsible not only for your own performance, but also for that of your people — many of whom may also face struggles with virtual communication effectiveness.

As you manage remote or hybrid teams, work to follow  best practices for managing virtual teams and meetings and and consider how various online leadership development solutions could benefit your team’s work.

Once you’ve tried our virtual communications tips to strengthen your virtual persona, you may want to get some feedback on how you’re doing, and also take time to reflect yourself.

Use our free Virtual Communication Effectiveness Quiz to assess the effectiveness of your virtual persona’s performance, and continue to develop by following the virtual communication tips and recommended next steps provided.

You may also want to use our easy email template to send a version of this quiz to your colleagues to get their candid feedback on the effectiveness of your virtual communications, too.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

In today’s new world of work, effective virtual communication for leaders is essential. Partner with us to craft a customized learning journey for your team using our research-based modules. Available leadership topics  include Authenticity,  Communication & Leadership , Emotional Intelligence, Listening to Understand, Psychological Safety & Trust, Self-Awareness, Virtual & Remote Team Leadership, and more.

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More From Forbes

The role of technology in the evolution of communication.

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For as long as humans have been on this planet, we’ve invented forms of communication—from smoke signals and messenger pigeons to the telephone and email—that have constantly evolved how we interact with each other. 

One of the biggest developments in communication came in 1831 when the electric telegraph was invented. While post existed as a form of communication before this date, it was electrical engineering in the 19th century which had a revolutionary impact. 

Now, digital methods have superseded almost all other forms of communication, especially in business. I can’t remember the last time I hand wrote a letter, rather than an email at work, even my signature is digital these days. Picking up the phone is a rare occurrence too—instead, I FaceTime, Zoom, or join a Google Hangout. 

When I look back at how communication has advanced over the years, it really is quite incredible…

The Telephone 

In 1849, the telephone was invented and within 50 years it was an essential item for homes and offices, but tethering impacted the flexibility and privacy of the device. Then, came the mobile phone. In 1973, Motorola created a mobile phone which kick-started a chain of developments that transformed communication forever. 

Early smartphones were primarily aimed towards the enterprise market, bridging the gap between telephones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), but they were bulky and had short battery lives. By 1996, Nokia was releasing phones with QWERTY keyboards and by 2010, the majority of Android phones were touchscreen-only. 

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In 2007, Steve Jobs revealed the first iPhone to the world and Apple paved the way for the aesthetics of modern smartphones. Before the iPhone, “flip phones”, and phones with a split keyboard and screen were the norm. A year later, a central application store with an initial 500 downloadable ‘apps’ was launched. Currently, there are over two million apps available in the Apple App Store. 

The Internet 

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has had a revolutionary impact on communication, including the rise of near-instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls, two-way interactive video calls, discussion forums, blogs, and social networking. 

The internet has made communication easier and faster, it’s allowed us to stay in contact with people regardless of time and location. It’s accelerated the pace of business and widened the possibilities within the enterprise space. It’s allowed people to find their voice and express themselves through social media, YouTube and memes. The internet has connected and divided us like nothing before. 

As a byproduct of the World Wide Web, email was introduced to the world in 1991 (although it had been operating years before) and it has vastly changed our lives—whether for better or worse depends on your viewpoint. The first users of the messaging platform were educational systems and the military who used email to exchange information. In 2018, there were more than 3.8 billion email users —that’s more than half the planet. By 2022, it’s expected that we will be sending 333 billion personal and business emails each day. 

While email is invaluable and we can’t imagine a world without it, there are tools that are springing up that are giving email a run for its money. Take Slack (an acronym for “Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge”) for example, the company which launched in 2014 has often been described as an email killer . However, while Slack has become the most popular chat and productivity tool in the world used by 10 million people every day, email is still going strong. In recognition of this, Slack’s upgrades have ensured that people who still rely heavily on email are not excluded from collaboratory work. 

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Wearable Technology 

The first instance of wearable technology was a handsfree mobile headset launched in 1999 , which became a piece of tech synonymous with city workers. It gave businesspeople the ability to answer calls on the go, most importantly, while driving.

Ten years ago, the idea that you could make a video call from an item other than a phone would have been a sci-fi dream. Now, with smartwatches, audio sunglasses, and other emerging wearable technology, these capabilities are a part of our daily lives. 

Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

Virtual Reality (VR) 

The next generation of VR has only been around since 2016, but it’s already shaking up communications. The beauty of VR— presence —means you can connect to someone in the same space at the same time, without the time sink and cost of travel, even if participants are on different continents. 

VR also helps to facilitate better communication. In a typical discussion, a lot of information is non-verbal communication which can be transcribed in VR. Voice tone, hesitations, head and hand movements greatly improve the understanding of the participants' emotions and intents. Plus in VR, all distractions are removed and people can be fully focused on what is happening around them. In fact, MeetinVR claims that there is a 25% increase in attention span when meeting in virtual reality compared to video conferencing. 

In addition, research suggests we retain more information and can better apply what we have learned after participating in virtual reality. 3D is a natural communication language overcoming linguistic barriers as well as technical jargon. 

5G, the 5th generation of mobile network, promises much faster data download and upload speeds, wider coverage, and more stable connections. These benefits will bring about significant improvements in communication. Instantaneous communication will be possible and those patchy frustrating video calls will be a thing of the past. 

The average 4G transmission speed currently available for our smartphones is around the 21 Mbps mark. 5G will be 100 to 1000 times faster. The Consumer Technology Association notes that at this speed, you could download a two-hour movie in just 3.6 seconds, versus 6 minutes on 4G or 26 hours on 3G. The impact of 5G will go far beyond our smartphones as it will allow millions of devices to be connected simultaneously. 

Looking ahead, there is already buzz about 6G . Although it’s still in basic research and around 15-20 years away, it’s interesting from an innovation point of view. 6G will form the framework of the connected utopia we aspire towards, and with it will come untold improvements in the speed and consistency of our communication. 

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