Collaboration Technology Dos and Don'ts

April 02, 2008

By Esther Shein

No longer is it necessary for a manager to be in the same building as an employee. Technologies such as instant messaging, web conferencing and video conferencing, in addition to email and teleconferences, have made it possible for managers to oversee employees or teams of people remotely. "With these tools, especially IM, you know where your people are, what they are doing and their progress," says Jan Sysmans, product marketing manager for Cisco. In an era where 20% of employees have never met their boss, these tools have become necessities.

However, successful social interaction can be a challenge, especially when team members only rely on email or IM. Such text messages tend to be short and people have no idea what tone is being used or the inflection of the sender's speech. Written comments also can be misconstrued and offend someone. The sender may also not get an immediate response, which can escalate a conflict. So while technology has made it possible to have asynchronous communication, "it can create some real problems from the point of view of the emotional response it has," says Dr. Karen Sobel Lojeski.

Video conferencing allows for more of a social presence than audio or text because people's expressions can be seen as well as some non-verbal behavior. And advancements in video technology are vastly improving, making real-time communications almost seamless. Cisco, for example, has developed a sophisticated, high-definition communications solution called TelePresence. Once the system is connected with another room in another location, "the synchronization is done in such a way that you immediately forget you're not in same room," says Sysmans. "It changes the paradigm. With the TelePresence environment virtual team members are fundamentally on par with each other and can have multiple discussions at same time."

Sysmans says TelePresence will make virtual teams even more productive and change the way business is conducted.

But virtual distance experts caution that even systems like TelePresence should not replace the all-important face to face meetings and the informal conversations that might take place afterwards, which are more likely to foster the building of close social relationships with coworkers.

"All these tools do not replace the benefits of a face to face meeting; they augment them," Sysmans notes.

Other issues to consider are more basic. "If you have speaker phones in a conference room, they need to be powerful so everyone can hear each other," Sysmans says. When people are working from home rather than an office, companies need to provide those employees with the right infrastructure, most importantly high speed internet access. Sysmans says the right environment will empower people to successfully work virtually.

Esther Shein is a senior writer for Triangle Publishing Services Co., Inc. of Newton, MA