A Simple Question about the Current State of Collaborative Technologies

June 17, 2008 at 6:55 pm · Filed under Collaboration, Distributed Work, Videoconferencing, Virtual Environments, Web Commuting

We are currently working with a well-established collaborative technology firm that has asked us to help design a survey aimed at the IT profession and focused on current issues and concerns surrounding the IT support for remote and mobile workers.

So I pose these questions to this community: what’s bugging you today about what tools are available - and not available - to the exploding distributed workforce? Or about how those tools are being used, or not used? What would you like to know about how people are using the tools today, how they feel about the levels of support they are getting from their IT organizations, and what they’d really to have?

I welcome your thoughts and questions, and promise to share what we learn about this important topic over the next several months.

Thanks in advance!

Conducting Performance Reviews in an Online Workplace

June 5, 2008 at 10:56 pm · Filed under AppGap Tips, Talent Management, Virtual Environments

Whether you have several teleworkers on your team or have all your company operations done online, you’ll need to do performance reviews regularly.  However, the online workplace makes this task a little different from its more traditional predecessor.  There are some things you need to consider when proceeding with a performance review for online workers and collaborators.

Measure output.  Compared to a traditional workplace, the online workplace is more output-oriented rather than time-oriented.  It’s less about the hours you clocked in, and more about the finished work you submit.  You can measure this work based on both quality and quantity.

•  Quality.  Since quality is relative and hard to define, it’s best to have a standard ratings system in place.  You can measure work quality based on punctuality, accuracy, creativity, and other factors that are relevant to your team members’ work.  When you measure using qualitative factors, try to use a number system to rate it.  You can use a range of 1 to 10, with 1 as the lowest and 10 as the highest rating.  Be sure to follow this up with a short paragraph describing how you arrived at the rating.
• Quantity.  The amount of work each team member brings to the table is also important.  How many reports did she hand in?  How many presentations did she make?   These are other things you need to knowledge apart from one’s final accountable output.

Archivable.  Whether you conduct performance reviews as real-time dialogs or a one-way reports, it’s best to save them all in one place and interface.  If the performance review took place in an online voice conversation, have the review transcribed and/or summarized for future reference.    The same goes for the text chatting performance reviews.  Written reports are easy to archive, so you don’t have to worry about them.

Accessible.   Even if you’ve archived your performance reviews, it’s important to make the archives accessible to whoever wants to access it.  This could be a supervisor, you, or the employee you’re evaluating.  For this purpose, integrate your performance review archives with whatever collaboration tool you’re using.  If your collaboration tool allows for RSS or e-mail subscriptions, this is an easy way for you to let your employees access their respective reviews as soon as they arrive.

Readable.  All performance review reports and summaries should be brief, as well as adhering to online writing standards.  This means scannable formatting, such as including bulleted and numbered lists,  as well as bold typeface for emphasis.

Conducting an online performance review may not be something that you’re used to, but it gets easier when you have a system in place.

Restoring the Meaning of Virtual Collaboration

January 29, 2008 at 9:20 am · Filed under Collaboration, Distributed Work, Virtual Environments

Bill Ives posted about Virtual Environments for Business: Unisfair a few days ago, commenting on the emergence of a new style of trade show. I have myself recently been delighted about MPK20, Sun’s Virtual Workspace, which I read about first in a CIO.COM article.

“MPK” is Sun Microsystems designation for the buildings on its Menlo Park campus. There are 19 buildings of brick and mortar. MPK20 is the building where the virtual teams meet to collaborate, to bump into colleagues serendipitously, and to have meetings. Project Wonderland, as it is called, offers a really special glimpse into what is possible in the development of applications that support human interaction in a virtual space.

Demos guided by Nicole Yankelovich include a walkthrough of the the “Virtual Workspace” that illustrates a virtual team room, offices, a meeting room, and a relaxation space. What impressed me the most was the way in which the workspace is designed to enable people to collaborate on content. I captured a screen from the video file that shows Nicole and a colleague editing a Powerpoint presentation in virtual space.

We have long been used to the terms “virtual team” and “virtual collaboration” to mean the work of people who do not happen to be sitting together even though (to my mind) they are really collaborating. Seeing Nicole and Joe collaborate in a truly virtual environment indicates that perhaps the term virtual, as we have been using it, was merely an intimation of the office of the future.