Individual Essay Virtual Teams Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Individual Virtual Teams - Essay Example 300). It is important to note that even though members of a virtual team may work from different branches of the same organization, their contribution to the team is expected to enable the organization reach a common goal. Body Before an organization decides to form a virtual team as a means of attaining organizational goals, it is critical to evaluate the pros and cons of such a team. Such an evaluation enables organizations to determine if a virtual team would be best suited to meet the needs and goals of the organization. Some of the advantages of such teams are outlined below. First, virtual teams are highly convenient because of the lack of time restrictions. Since the members of a virtual team often reside in different cities/ countries, members are aware, from the onset, that team meetings may be held at odd hours. The communication technology that is used by virtual teams is designed to be effective irrespective of time differences. The ability of such teams to work without t ime restrictions is very beneficial since essentially, a company can work for twenty-four hours a day (Hungwei & Heng-Yu, 2011, p. 83). This increases the amount of work that is accomplished in one day, which leads to increased productivity. The lack of restrictions on time also means that in most cases, virtual teams hold meetings when members have varying energy levels because of the time difference (Berry, 2011, p. 193). This is beneficial since team members are not likely to be exhausted at the same time, which makes the virtual team highly productive (Ofir & Zhang, 2010, p. 368). Another notable advantage of virtual teams is that they may cost the company less in terms of overhead. As noted in this paper, virtual team members do not necessarily have to be in the office to hold meetings. In fact some members may work for their homes on a full time basis because face to face meetings in the office may not be needed. As such, companies are able to save costs that they may otherwis e have incurred on things such as office space and other office amenities (Panteli & Tucker, 2009, p. 113). Virtual teams are also beneficial since they enable companies to acquire the best possible variety of employees that can steer the company to success. In some cases, companies may be unable to hire all the skills they need because they rely on local-based employees who can be able to report to the local office. By making use of virtual teams, companies can ensure that they do not compromise and hire minimally skilled employees (Jacques, Garger, & Brown, 2009, pp. 153-154). Virtual teams can comprise of members who are not able to relocate to the location of the actual office but who are just as skilled as or even more skilled than employees who work from the office. In addition to this, a virtual team is also advantageous since it leads to reliance on a result- based method of measuring employee performance. During the evaluation of the performance of employees who work from t he office, some companies may erroneously rate the performance of employees who stay longer in the office highly. However, just because an employee put more effort by staying in the office longer, this does not necessarily mean that such an employee contributes highly to the attainment of organizational goals. Since the performance