'Virtual teams' need a variety of communication tools at their disposal to make up for the lack of face-to-face interaction, writes John Collins

In our wired business world, how often do you hear colleagues or contacts who meet for the first time say, "It's great to put a face to the e-mail address"?

This reflects the fact that more and more work is being done in virtual teams where the members are in different locations and use electronic communication tools to collaborate.

The effectiveness of communications between such geographically dispersed teams is the subject of a recent study by HR consultants Pearn Kandola.

According to Carolyn Shearsmith, an occupational psychologist and co-author of the report, the trend towards globalisation is resulting in these working arrangements becoming more common. However, they are frequently resisted by staff because they are "seen as less productive and [ they] suffer more conflict".

There are a number of reasons why this is the case, according to Shearsmith, whose report, The Psychology of Effective Business Communications in Geographically Dispersed Teams, was sponsored by networking equipment manufacturer, Cisco Systems.

Normal team building is based on a series of subtle interactions that are difficult to replicate when teams rely on phone, e-mail, instant messaging and video conferencing.

Shearsmith says that building interpersonal relationships relies on non-verbal cues which are eliminated with the use of text-based communications such as email. "Even on the phone, you only have tone of voice to rely on," she says.

In addition, virtual teams don't engage in the casual conversations that occur when team members are located in the same building.

Because of such issues, Shearsmith advises that "teams should use very rich media such as video conferencing, particularly at the outset, so that the members can get to know each other more quickly".

Cultural differences can also have a major impact on team building across borders. The research draws a distinction between high and low-context cultures.

For example, in Japan there is often a strong link between people's personal and business life, so it's normal to have a lot of knowledge about your co-workers already and there is less need to sound out this information in conversation. This in contrast to the US and Europe, where colleagues generally communicate more about themselves in conversations.

"As a result, when they start communicating, the Japanese can appear secretive and even sneaky to those from the West, while the Japanese may think the Americans are too chatty," says Shearsmith.

Other cultural differences include collectivist (eg Japan and Indonesia) versus individualist cultures (eg Ireland and the US), with those in the former less likely to give a negative response to a colleague even when they don't agree with them.

The research also found that there is currently an over-reliance on e-mail for business communications, with this medium being used for types of communication for which it is highly unsuitable.

"People often struggle to choose the best media for a particular type of communication," says Shearsmith. "E-mail is only really suitable for documenting or communicating tasks.

"For personal conversations, video communications or phone is better, and spontaneous communications are best served by instant messaging or ad-hoc video conferencing."

Pearn Kandola's research found that 63 per cent of all business communications are non-verbal, which suggests there is a significant challenge for virtual teams to fill in the blanks. As a result, it can take them four times as long to communicate the same message and building trust between team members typically takes at least two weeks longer.

This might suggest that the sponsor, Cisco, which has become one of the world's biggest technology companies by selling hardware and software that facilitate communications, could be unhappy with the findings.

But the report concludes that many of the barriers can be overcome by harnessing the latest communications tools such as PC-based video conferencing, instant messaging and unified communications which allow for the sharing of documents and applications over the web.

"Teams using computer-mediated communications need to have a range of media available to them to allow communications at all times," says Shearsmith.

In fact, although multicultural teams take longer to gel, the conclusion was that after 17 weeks they start to outperform so-called "monocultural" counterparts.