Colocation or virtual teams?
Is the team you manage or work with all working at the same site? Or is the staff distributed and working together virtually? If your team is virtual, do you have some suggestions about how to make them feel more cohesive? When it is hard to have a team lunch or other "get together", what do you do?
Hi Robin:
My team has staff all over the place, as far as The Philippines and India. We use Skype to communicate. The Phillippines team is on the same schedule we are as in, they are around during our business hours here in Texas. The India team is overnight. We interact via Skype video. We have a TV on the wall with a video conferencing camera that points at our team and the offshore teams have the same setup.
Throughout the day we walk by and interact with our team in the Philippines. If we get here early enough we can usually catch the India teams as they are rolling out at the end of their shift.
It's a neat experience that makes everyone feel like one big team.
With the invention of Skype and other face-to-face services, you can do a brown bag lunch with everyone. They get to see what everyone looks like and it's more "face-to-face" than what usually occurs.
You can pick a certain time of the year for everyone to meet in one location.
WOW, this is such an awesome question and also a strange coincidence because the company I work for has been expanding offices to other parts of the country so we’re facing the same challenges right now. I still think we’re a relatively small company but the teams certainly feel like they have broken up. Real time video conferencing throughout the day sounds like a good idea. Interested in seeing other suggestion. Thank you.