Building and Managing a Growing Global Team in 2021

More and more companies are relying on a geographically dispersed workforce to build innovative solutions and scale at speed. While there are many benefits of working with global teams, the most significant advantage is the unlimited access to large pools of people with strong functional expertise and deep technical knowledge.

However, on the flip side, building and managing a global team can seem challenging, especially if you’ve never done it before. Collaborating with team members from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, establishing clear lines of communication, and mitigating social distance are some of the areas that need extra care and attention.

So what can you do?

As experts in building distributed teams for our partners, we understand that there are four key components that must be addressed when working with global teams. Let’s dive deeper…

1. Structure

In layman’s terms, an organisational structure is the pattern of relationships that exist within a business. When hiring locally, building a fundamental structure is fairly straightforward — a team is put together, and a manager is appointed to lead the team members.

But how do you replicate this with global teams?

Simply put, in the exact same way as you would with your local team.

An organisational structure exists to clarify the responsibilities of each employee, remove the confusion and obstacles attached to tasks, and make decision making and communication simpler. At the end of the day, it helps businesses achieve their objectives efficiently. And that’s why, when you’re integrating your local workforce with offshore employees, creating the right structure — one that does not involve power dynamics — is crucial.

Remind your team members, irrespective of where they are located, of three important things:

• The organisation is one single entity, even though every individual may be different in their own way.
• All team members share a common goal and purpose. And that’s why every person’s work contributes to the overall growth of the business.
• The responsibility of team leaders, despite geographical limitations, is to be there for every employee. A brief phone call, an email, or a video chat — the medium doesn’t matter.

2. Technology

Today, technology makes the world go round. And while one can debate about the pros and cons of technological advancements for months on end, the fact of the matter is that technology has made global communication so much simpler.

But are companies communicating the right way?

A recent study conducted by Forrester of over 10,000 employees showed that 94% of them use emails to communicate with their teammates. While there is nothing really wrong with emails, they still fall under the delayed communication format, which means that the turnaround time is longer.

Instead, using instant-messaging tools and videoconferencing applications promotes more real-time collaboration, in turn increasing overall efficiency. Unfortunately, not many companies do so. In fact, only 33% of the respondents in the survey use video conferencing tools to communicate with their teams.

Read the full article at: https://thescalers.com/building-and-managing-a-growing-global-team-in-2021/