The hunt for highly skilled talent has led most firms – even start-ups and SMEs with smaller teams – to increasingly accept a workforce that is spread across the globe.
As a result, digital transformation has moved from being a plaque on the wall to being a necessity as firms look to virtual teams and hybrid work models to remain resilient and robust.
Over the past two years, the Covid-19 pandemic has doubled down on digitalisation, testing the future readiness of the workplaces, according to experts, who now state that global virtual teams (GVTs) are becoming inevitable.
In order to stay ahead of the curve, prevent siloed work cultures, and improve productivity, firms in the Middle East will need to focus on training and upskilling their workforce to embrace virtual and hybrid work models.
“Digital transformation has been one of the critical learnings from the ongoing pandemic, with its adoption reaping benefits across sectors. In such a context, the need for global virtual teams (GVTs) is more important than ever before in order to attract and retain global talent,” said Dr Norhayati Zakaria, Associate Professor, Faculty of Business, at the University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD).
“While remote working and the consequential rise of global virtual teams is not unfamiliar, there has been a noticeable increase in this way of working.”
Will virtual teams feature in the future of the working?
The switch to a remote way of working over the past two years, coupled with the introduction and the establishment of global virtual teams, poses an important question: Do we really need a physical office anymore?
Dr Zakaria says: “While the pandemic is being dealt with differently across the world, it is likely that virtual teaming will become a permanent fixture even post-pandemic through the introduction of hybrid models or through the complete reliance on a virtual way of working.”
According to a recent McKinsey report, 30 percent of employees surveyed said that they would possibly switch jobs if they were asked to return to on-site work in its entirety.
“Both employees and employers have shown resilience across virtual environments in the face of the pandemic, and it makes perfect business sense to leverage this resilience and efficiency through concepts such as Global Virtual Teams (GVTs),” Dr Zakaria adds.
However, this shift towards virtual teams and virtual interactions due to globalisation and increased digital connectivity – further spurred by the adoption of virtual reality, augmented reality, and metaverse tools – have raised questions regarding diversity and inclusion in multi-cultural teams, as well as the mental health impact of reduced face-to-face interactions.
Dr Zakaria explains: “While there are a lot of benefits of tapping into a culturally-diverse pool of talent, it is important to understand that this diversity can also bring about a set of challenges such as mental health, impeding the very collaboration and communication workplaces strive for.
“Hence, while deploying GVTs, employers and employees must collaborate to leverage appropriate communication methods, tap into team diversity, generate actionable virtual work-cycle and meetings, and ensure external assessments to better recognise the team.”
There is no doubt that the remote work landscape is changing. This dynamism calls for increased agility and greater cultural sensibilities.
Dr Zakaria concludes: “Globally, work practices, framework, culture, and structure undergo several variations; the onus to chalk strategies to navigate such variations lie with employers and policy and decision makers.
“Effective virtual collaboration tools should be leveraged to replicate or resemble an in-office interaction. But, tools can only offer a vision; an agile way of working needs to empower that vision and generate actionable results.”
This article was originally published on our sister site ArabianBusiness.com.
