Global work groups, or virtual teams, have come into their own as companies have reduced spend on executive travel and opted instead to work on projects and communicate across time zones via teleconferencing, webcasts, and instant messaging as the global economic crisis bites.
This virtual work model has been common in the technology sector for some years as companies with customers spread worldwide have had to find ways of linking up their research and development centres (R&D) to service customers 24 hours, seven days a week. Microsoft is a master at global work groups, with its R&D centres worldwide that were set up specifically to enable work to proceed on multiple projects continuously.
According to Pattrahaj Hemakul, director of human resources Asia-Pacific at Siemens PLM Software, working in virtual teams has been driven by customer needs as business has become global. 'People in the company are working on projects that originate in different places, and they need to be able to talk to each other to solve problems for our customers,' she said.
At Siemens PLM, this virtual teamwork has become what Ms Hemakul termed 'normal' with discussions about projects via conference calls, and programmes and training taking place via webcasts and videoconferencing.
'We have the technology to support this and the tools that allow us to do it,' she said. 'We have applications that allow us to view each other's computer screens from our desks. But our organisation is technology oriented and this method of working is probably now embedded within our culture,' Ms Hemakul said.
Other organisations such as Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH) are beginning to familiarise themselves with the virtual, cross-country, cross-regional and cross-disciplined world that can be accessed through global work groups. The initiative at HPH stemmed from a management course that had as part of its work an action learning project that required the company's managers to form virtual teams because they were based in different locations.