Bridging the Distance
Types of distance
When working in a virtual environment, there are three main kinds of distance we must overcome (Dhawan, Chamorro-Premuzic, 2018):
Physical: Locations and time zones
Operational: team size, bandwidth, skill level
Affinity: values, trust, interdependency
Effective solutions
Physical:
Utilize both asynchronous and synchronous communication depending on the employee's time zone and location. Zoom works for any face-to-face meetings, and email will allows for asynchronous text-based communications that can be responded to later.
Operational:
We include a personality test during the hiring process that ensures member's are placed on the most fitting teams. Each team member is introduced to their specific role during the onboarding process.
Affinity:
Utilize video and face-to-face communication whenever possible. One overall weekly meeting is our standard practice that we encourage our clients to adopt -- set the expectations for that week, and ensure the team is on the same page. Our most important addition to the onboarding process is a team mentor that the new-hire can contact any time within their first 2 months working. This mentor will introduce the new hire to the company's values, and provide support with any team or technological issues they may have.
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