Role as a Supervisor in a Virtual Organization - Essay Example

Role as a Supervisor in a Virtual Organization A supervisor in a virtual organization is responsible for managing work among people in different parts of the world, and his ability to succeed depends on his capacity to leverage on this quality. He carries out performance management by setting clear goals, facilitating and encouraging workers to achieve those goals as having clear standards eliminates ambiguity that easily creeps into virtual environments. Communication-facilitation is also another role performed by these supervisors; the key to success in this area is to be as reliable and consistent as possible. Likewise, these same traits have to be maintained when carrying out the role of trust building as no method of socialization is present; managers should substitute socialization with consistency and high responsiveness. Having an atmosphere is sharing and frequent feedback is critical in carrying out the role of a cultural facilitator within a virtual firm, as well. Introduction Virtual organizations consist of members who work in geographically disparate locations through technology with the aim of achieving common goals; such firms are usually cross-functional and tend to dwell on client needs. Virtual organizations have increased exponentially over the past decade owing to proliferation of the internet, travel restrictions arising from political or economic upheavals, and increased competitiveness. Supervisors carrying out this role have to contend with certain challenges and circumstances that are unique to the virtual environment; these issues shall be examined in detail subsequently and their relation to the supervisor role outlined. Supervisor role in the virtual organization One thing that virtual supervisors must confront, which is almost absent in non - virtual organizations, is the issue of trust. When carrying out one’s responsibilities with other organizational members, it is critical to have trust amongst one another; usually, this is established through face-to-face interaction. Since virtual organizations have eliminated this form of contact, then supervisors have the additional duty of building trust among their subordinates using other methods. Research shows that effective supervisors are able to create trust in virtual environments by encouraging organizational members to become highly responsive to each other (Bradley, Benson, Gibson, Tesluk and McPherson, 2002). Feedback is the key behind sustaining a positive attitude towards one another even when people rarely get to meet each other. Additionally, since it is not possible to share meals or discuss personal matters through this route, then being consistent about one’s tasks and duties can substitute for socialization. If a person can always be counted on to do their part, then the other members of the virtual organization will learn to depend on them; it is critical for leaders or supervisors to create an atmosphere of ability-based trust. The people for whom he or she is in charge need to maintain consistent or predictable results at work such that the other members can trust them to honor their commitment. Managers need to ensure that subordinates do not change priorities overnight or take long lags before responding to a form of communication from another member. This can be done by coaching members to honor these responsibilities, or it could be augmented by having an organization charter in which virtual member behavior is outlined. The supervisor can decide that no one should take longer than 24 hours to respond to an email in the organizational charter. Overall, virtual managers need to realize that no social interactions are present to build trust; therefore, they need to establish this quality through proactive policies like e-chats. They must also serve as an example of how to do this by ensuring that they always deliver on promises and keep information confidential when it is necessary to do so. Performance management is something that warrants particular attention from managers in virtual organizations as they cannot physically see how work gets done. Supervisors in these environments must attempt to define performance first and then facilitate it, and then finally encourage their employees to achieve it. Defining performance often involves clarifying the responsibilities that members of the virtual organization are supposed to carry out; some pertinent questions have to be asked. For instance, what the overall organizational objective is as well as the responsibilities to be carried out by the employees; it may also be necessary to clarify how decisions are made and disciplinary channels to be followed when making those decisions. Once an organization has defined its general issues, it must have challenging and specific goals as well; an outsourcing firm in India may have the following specific goal: “to meet customer requirements in a timely manner (within 30 minutes)”. Outlining such specific goals causes members of the virtual group to have measurable objectives to work towards; it is incumbent upon the concerned supervisor to measure his virtual group’s performance based on these specific goals as it will give the company a direction to work towards (Cascio, 2000). Remote workers should have no doubt whatsoever about what they are expected to do at any point in time as uncertainty usually leads to inertia and low productivity. Supervisors in such environments have to create a predictable routine where employees know how their work will be related to measurements that have been put in place at a particular time. Constant feedback concerning new performance goals is critical as this causes workers to be always knowledgeable, which is a fact that is necessary for the very survival of a virtual firm. As soon as managers have outlined the performance goals, they must ensure that their virtual members have the right support needed to achieve those goals. This may entail providing them with the right material, human and capital resources; therefore, cases of poorly functioning technologies should be almost nonexistent. Workers ought not to be overburdened by work as the organization needs to have sufficient manpower needed to handle the workload; furthermore, they need to have the right capital to implement certain functions. Alternatively, the supervisors can create work processes that make work with disparately located workmates seamlessly possible. It makes no sense for a manager to create performance goals and not offer his employees the right support for achieving those outcomes. Aside from offering the right material support for such goals, it is imperative for a supervisor to encourage his subordinates using other conventional incentives. Managers in virtual settings have a harder challenge than normal ones because they need to determine what motivates their workers to perform even when most of them have never met. For this reason, the supervisor ought to determine what matters to the employees in terms of rewards; it could be more free time, better technologies, opportunities for advancement, or simply pay. Once workers have stated what is most pertinent to them, the supervisors ought to allow them to select from a preset menu of items in order to align rewards with employee values. In the virtual environment, these rewards must be done in a timely manner; excessive delays between the activity and the rewards will not cause employees to be sufficiently motivated. It has also been shown that communication is one of the toughest challenges in virtual environments as feelings of isolation and disengagement from the larger group are likely to arise. Supervisors in these environments need to familiarize themselves with new communication skills; emails are usually the primary method of communication but are not sufficient. Other alternatives like video and teleconferencing ought to be considered, and in recent times, social media is also another great tool for connecting with one’s workers in remote locations (Charlene, 2010). In order to make communication seamless between supervisors and their subordinates, it is critical for some ground rules to exist concerning different modes. For instance, members of a certain department need to agree to use the company intranet in order to discuss project issues, and they should have a certain timeline for these updates. Phone availability is the next best thing to face-to-face communication; people should have preset rules on the nature and quantity of telephone contact between members. This arrangement is especially necessary for people who live in different time zones as failure to agree on certain times could disrupt others’ work patterns and work-life balance. Having virtual meetings through video conferences, Skype or other options allows people to put faces to the online communications they have received. This builds relationships between the supervisor and his subordinates, so once those meetings have been scheduled, it should be completely impermissible for any worker to miss it. As virtual organizational members communicate with each other, they need to realize that they do not have some of the tools of verbal communication that other traditional companies possess. For instance, they cannot read the facial expressions of their leaders and colleagues like the conventional groups; therefore, they ought to substitute it with other non verbal methods. One way of achieving this is when the supervisor asks more questions and encourages his workers to do the same in order to seek clarification about certain things. Additionally, even engaging in more telephone conversations can assist in development of such rapport in the virtual organization. Supervisors in this environment can strengthen their level of communication by always communicating with all subordinates and including them in distribution lists. Frequency of status reports as well as regular updates cannot be overemphasized as this is the replacement for hallway conversations that conventional firms enjoy (Azimi, 2011). Managers have the responsibility of facilitating communication in their companies especially when the nature of communication is peculiar to them. For instance, some firms could be quite technical and might need to present their information on spreadsheets or other forms of software. Proper guidance from the supervisor is essential in ensuring that workers are on the same page concerning the information conveyed in those templates. It is also critical that effective communication policies exist in virtual companies, as this is the bond that strengthens the working team and thus delivers results. Choosing the right communication platform for the right purpose is critical in this regard as not all methods are suitable for a particular issue. For example, video conferencing or seeing the other parties works when the concerned agenda is ambiguous and the tasks involved are unstructured or some conflicts have to be resolved. However, status reports or other communications that do not require immediate action can be sent through the company intranet or via email. Effective supervisors ought to have the right discretion to determine which methods is the most suitable for their circumstances (Baard & Thomas, 2010). Sometimes virtual organizations are located in different countries thus presenting cultural challenges to the departments and members involved. Leaders working in such cases have to contend with differences in management styles among other colleagues as well as differences in ethics and values. For instance, Indian supervisors may consider it customary to proofread all work reports before putting them in the company database permanently. However, American managers may give employees the discretion to perform this responsibility, as they believe in greater work autonomy. When a virtual organization is made up of American supervisors and Indian employees, some conflicts could arise between the two groups. Subordinates may want to seek approval from their superiors in every aspect of their job, yet this could seem redundant and unwarranted for American managers (Heller, Laurito, Johnson, Martin, Fitzpatrick & Sundin, 2010). Owing to the above issue, it is critical for managers working in different parts of the world to familiarize themselves with the cultural differences that might affect work prior to taking up the role. The same should also occur for subordinates, as they need to be aware of the cultural differences that could come in the way of seamless work collaboration. Some discussions are necessary in order to identify the different cultural barriers that may be affecting the organization. Some degree of consensus is imperative on determining how to handle those differences; this may sometimes involve establishing shared values for the company. Diversity training has also been shown to be quite helpful for virtual firms as they get to appreciate, understand and even leverage on cultural differences between each other. Conclusion A supervisor in a virtual organization has the responsibility of synchronizing efforts between organizational members across various geographies. His role alters because of this fact and he must adjust in order to make up for the deficiencies of his work environment. Problems of trust can be managed by ensuring consistency and reliability at work while communication difficulties can be overcome through the same traits. Virtual leaders also have to deal with cultural challenges by acknowledging difference and establishing shared values within the company as is necessary. Performance management is carried out by having consistent and clear goals and reliable rewards as well as feedback from the organization. References Azimi, D. (2011). Virtual project collaboration. Retrieved from http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:565847/FULLTEXT01.pdf Baard, N. & Thomas, A. (2010). Teleworking in South Africa: Employee benefits and challenges. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 8(1), 10. Bradley, K., Benson, R., Gibson, C., Tesluk, P. and McPherson, S. (2002). Five challenges to virtual team success: Lessons from Sabre Inc. Academy of Management Executive, 16(3), 67-79. Cascio, W. (2000). Managing a virtual workplace. Academy of Management Executive, 14(3), 81-90. Charlene, S. (2010). The challenges of working in virtual teams- virtual teams survey report. Retrieved from http://www.rw-3.com/VTSReportv7.pdf Heller, R., Laurito, A., Johnson, K., Martin, M., Fitzpatrick, R., & Sundin, K. (2010). Global teams: Trends, challenges and solutions. 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