Feb 9th, 2009 |
In 2006 there were 750 million virtual workers globally. By 2011 that number is expected to reach 1billion people and roughly 3/4 of the U.S. workforce. Dr. Karen Sobel Lojeski, Chief Executive Officer of Virtual Distance International sited those numbers during a recent BusinessWeek webcast that also featured Enterprise 2.0 Conference adviser and NetAge CEO, Jessica Lipnack. The webcast topic: “Boosting Productivity through Virtual Collaboration” is something Jessica covers extensively at NetAge and is a huge theme for us at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference.
It’s no surprise to see the use of virtual technologies increasing, especially during difficult times where companies are desperate to cut costs. In fact, BusinessWeek conducted a live poll during the webcast and found that 48% of the audience were already using virtual collaboration daily while 32% used it weekly and 10% monthly. Certainly “virtual collaboration” can be defined pretty broadly to include everything from the company wiki to a conference bridge but the point remains that what was already an increasing trend in business will be accelerated by our current economic woes.
Using the example of virtual meetings, Jessica points out that besides the economic drivers, virtual meetings are simply more productive than live meetings. With virtual meetings, participants can get to the information they need at any time. This access to information provides a context to virtual meetings that is difficult to achieve with face-to-face meetings.
I’m also drinking the virtual meeting kool aid these days and have adopted virtual meetings for my bi-weekly project team meetings . Our group now meets using a conference bridge and simple desktop sharing application called Yuuguu. I started doing virtual meetings a couple months back because our team is geographically dispersed and found it difficult to follow the conference room conversation when dialing in from remote locations. Moving the meeting entirely to the phone meant everyone could hear what was going on and participate in the meeting. Additionally our team meetings are now more efficient because we can pull up and disseminate information on demand using the desktop sharing application. Want to see the design mock ups we’re about to launch or review a budget spreadsheet? I can can bring them into the shared desktop for all to see. There are no more paper handouts or cumbersome screen projectors to deal with which I consider a big step in the right direction.
While virtual meetings are great, both Karen and Jessica point out that there’s risk in leaning too heavily on technology to replace real person-to-person interaction. Karen calls this “Virtual Distance TM” which she defines as: “…the perceived distance between two or more individuals when their primary method of communication and coordination is not face to face. Virtual Distance can exist regardless of whether people are separated by millimeters, miles or continental masses.” While using technology to communicate and collaborate is fantastic, the speakers point out that it is also important to establish face-to-face communication from time to time.
Thanks for picking up on the BusinessWeek webcast, Steve. I’ve done a post on the back-stage experience here: http://tinyurl.com/cx5o65
And I’m really glad to see that you’re going virtual for some of your meetings. Reminder from the virtual aficiandos: be sure to use the “face clock” - and screen sharing. Improves quality of the meeting enormously.
Now to the subject of face-to-face: research cuts both ways on this. For the Harvard Business Review study (http://tinyurl.com/4hc7e) I co-authored, we found that teams could do extraordinary things without benefit of meeting in person. Sad, but true. I prefer the real thing (as in when are you and I having coffee again) but if you can’t get together “in real,” virtual can be astonishingly successful.
Steve, the 3/4 of US workforce number is pretty dramatic, and I am not sure I believe it. Could you post further details of how the projection was done, and what Lojseki defines as ‘virtual’?
Venkat
Incidentally, since I work from home, nearly all my meetings are virtual. A webcam makes a BIG difference, especially when you are webconferencing with a new person for the first time. Curiously, even when I do drop in on HQ, most of my meetings are still somewhat virtual, since there are team members across a 14.5 hour time-zone spread, California to Chennai.
I thought the same thing about the 3/4 number Venkat. But listening to the webcast, they use the term virtual collaboration very broadly. In the speaker’s definition a teleconference bridge is included as virtual collaboration so it’s a bit easier to see how they get to 3/4 of the US population.
Good point on the Webcam. I’m also using a webcam w/skype more and more these days. As is so often the case, it’s easier to use these tools/best practices as individuals or in small groups. Scaling them to large enterprise adoption is tougher to tackle.
Hmm… okay, it is both legit and disingenuous to count any telecon bridge as ‘virtual.’ Lots of large companies with many sites and many buildings per site often have conference calls where everyone is in their office. This is no more ‘virtual’ than a paper memo from the 20s doing a big circuit via interoffice mail to gather signatures.
I think a more legitimate definition of ‘virtual’ would be a cultural one: at least one attendee calling in from a work location other than a company provided office, AND that being the norm for that person.
So somebody who’s calling in from home due to a family emergency does not count.
CISCO may want the loose definition to do bandwidth and capacity planning, but culturally, it is the tighter definition that matters.