Workplace
ronment is that it helps if you can meet people face-to-face, even if it’s only once. “Virtual relationships work better if you have a preexisting relationship,” he says. “You don’t get the same ambiguities in communication when you know the other person.” He recommends organiz- ing a team get-together or kick-off meet- ing to help people put names to faces. Although he recognizes that it isn’t always easy, or even possible. “In my own work, I frequently collaborate with people in Australia or the UK and it’s all done by email or Skype.” The difficulty with virtual interactions
for management, Kelloway says, is that they tend to be more formal than per- sonal meetings, making it harder to establish team camaraderie and a dy- namic corporate culture. Video-con- ferences are a good example, he says. “People file into separate rooms, the cameras come on and everybody sits up straight and works through the agenda — but most meetings aren’t actually like that. People wander in and they joke and talk about what’s on TV and eventually get down to business.” The key to fight- ing formality in virtual working relation- ships, he says, is to plan casual commu- nications. “You have to consciously reach out to employees and make connections that aren’t always task oriented. We tell managers to make a point of calling every now and then just to say, ‘Hi, how are you?’” Kelloway says it’s especially im- portant to do this because it’s all too easy for people to driſt off and become disen- gaged. “As a leader, you need a plan for how you’re going to stay in touch to keep people involved. Teams don’t just hap- pen— you have to work at them and when we started working virtually, we forgot all that.” Surani agrees, adding that in virtual
work situations, managers should adopt a more flexible leadership approach. “It just means you need to be a little more flexible, more personal and add humour
and fun to make it easier and comfortable for people to interact,” he says. Some- times it’s as simple as recognizing em- ployees individually to help them feel less isolated. When Surani wakes up at 3 a.m. to join a meeting that’s being held in East Africa, the president of the university always acknowledges him and thanks him directly. “It’s just a simple thank-you, but it keeps me motivated for months.” When Surani is the one leading a confer- ence call, he makes sure to be first on the line and greets everyone individually. “When everyone else joins and sees that the supervisor is already there, it sends the message that the meeting is impor- tant and that I care,” he says. “It’s about using both discipline and empathy as a manager to establish trust and mutual respect.” Virtual team members should be considered as part and parcel of the organization and they should never fall into the trap of being “out of sight, out of mind.” Another way to motivate faraway em-
ployees is through award and recognition programs — something that’s actually easier to do in a virtual setting, Kelloway says. In some of his earliest work, he studied how managers lead through email and discovered that strong leader- ship works the same way in a virtual workplace as it does in a conventional office setting. “You can still be inspiring, motivating and make a point of recog- nizing accomplishments virtually. Oſten it’s even more powerful because with email you have the ability to copy every- body in and make it a more public form of recognition,” he says. “All the same stuff we teach in leadership training about recognizing people and their accomplishments is maybe even more important in a virtual setting when people are spread out and not in regular contact with each other.” At Crowe Soberman, Hodkinson spent
two years helping identify core com- petencies for the firm’s staff and es-
tablishing a new awards program to rec- ognize employees through a nomination process. “It’s useful because it helps people get to know — and think about — others in areas of the firm they may not come in contact with,” she says. “You have to work a little harder at the cultural thing when everybody’s not in the office all the time, but it’s not realistic to say, ‘We aren’t going to do business that way.’ You have to embrace it.” Ladha, who is in charge of IT and over-
sees marketing at KBH, says it’s impor- tant to recognize there will be some added costs to setting up virtual offices initially, but the long-term benefits include a happier, more productive staff and a stronger firm culture. “For telecommuting to be effective, a firm needs to have made the shift to be as paperless as possible and also just needs someone to say, ‘I want to work like this.’ Then it’s just a matter of hiring IT to make it possible.” At KBH, all nonadministrative employ-
ees have laptops and can work off-site whenever they need to, Ladha says. The firm spent four years establishing and upgrading a secure terminal and net- work connections to deal with privacy- related information and to handle the flow of sensitive documents. It also set up employees with the necessary soſt- ware on their laptops, as well as the ability to connect remotely to their office machines. “All of these changes have been driven
by demand,” Ladha says. “We all have increased pressures and demands on our time and we live in a society where most spouses work, but we all still want to par- ticipate fully in family life. It’s a detriment to a firm not to give managers and employees the ability to telecommute — you just need to recognize that you don’t need to be in a physical office to connect with people, as long as you provide an atmosphere where that communication is easy.” — Sydney Loney
MARCH 2016 | CPA MAGAZINE | 17
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