Trust-based Human Resources Management in Virtual Teams

Trust-based Human Resources Management in Virtual Teams
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ZOU XiaoLing
School of Economic Management Henan Polytechnic University Jiaozuo Henna
[email protected]
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，P. R. China, 454000
Abstract: With the improvement of the network application and the development of economic
globalization, the virtual team in which work, communication and management are based on the Internet
is increasingly popular. The new organization poses greast challenges on the one hand and gives
potential opportunity on the other hand to the innovation and development of traditional human
resources management. Roles that trust plays in human resources management in virtual teams are first
analyzed in the paper. Trust chanllenge resulting from the virtual team itself and from different aspects
after its construction is then expounded. Human resources management strategies to enhance sense of
trust in virtual teams are finally discussed from the aspects of recruitment, training and performance
assessment, etc..
Key Words: Trust Virtual Team Human Resources Management Strategy
1. Instruction
With the improvement of network application and the development of economic globalization, the
organization and management of designing, construction, manufacturing and services etc. are not
concentrated and confined to narrow space, and the virtual team in which work, communication and
management are based on the Internet is increasingly popular. While the virtual team provides solution
to complicated problems, it is faced with challenges to its own existence and efficiency the human
resources management in it being particularly difficult. For a virtual organiation, trust compensates the
deficiencies in its management and control and is a key factor for its success. Consequently, establishing
and maintaining trust in a virtual team is of vital importance to the study on its human resources
management.
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2. Roles of trust in human resources management in virtual teams
A virtual team is a group of people in different places to interact with each other for the same objectives
or tasks. Even having no actural working place, it is a complete team with its own operating mechanism.
The virtual team is different from the traditional one in that its members are scattered in different places
who employ communative technologies to realize communication beyond the confinement of time,
space and organizations. The virtual team has technological advantages for the use of the latest
technologies in network, mobile phone and videophone, etc.. But even a slightest error in management
might make it out of control. The core issue for virtual team management is to establish and maintain
trust in it, which is different from the “control and order” in traditional team management.
Trust is indispentable in human resources management in that it is involved in almost every aspect of
the management like communication, performance assessment, etc.. The virtual team needs trust of
higher level than traditional fact-to-face team does. Long-distance contact breeds distrust for lack of
fact-to-fact interaction, which also makes trust hard to build and easy to lose. Charles Handy says in his
Trust & the Virtual Organization:“no trust, no virtual organization.” Peter Marshall points out in his
Structure, Strategy and Success Factors of Virtual Organizations that the basic elements of success for
virtual organizations include a common objective, mutual trust, willingness to share risks and mutual
benefit based on the existence of virtual organizations.
Trust is an indispensable part in virtaul team establishment. Broadly speaking, trust is the belief and
confidence in the uprightness, justice and reliablity of a particular person, team or organization. The
feeling originates from his practical expericence of the past, be it short- or long-term. The important part
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of trust is relflected in the entire lifecycle of a virtual team: (1) A virtual team can be established only
when there is trust; (2) Trust acts as the full-performance lubricant in tackling difficult work for a virtual
team; (3) Trust or distrust from organization environment will contiue even after the virtual team is
dismissed. Consequently, deep concern should be attached to every development phase of a virtual team.
Other conditions being equal, team with higher degree of trust has easier way of forming cohension, is
quicker in organizing work and thus has higher management efficiency.
3. Challenges confronted with virtual teams in human resources management
Our judgement on whether someone is reliable and worth long-term trust depends mainly on his tangible
social capital such as his identity, social status or evaluable asset or financial situation, etc.. This is not
applicable to virtual teams for the reason that virtual teams are formed on the basis of a particular
market opportunity and environment. That most members in a virtual team are unfamiliar with their
partners, along with lack of face-to-face contact and information communication, makes the trust
between members built on swift trust, giving it self-evident frangibility.
3.1 Trust challenges brought by its natural deficiencies to virtual teams
Firstly, trust in virtual teams are based on unfamiliarity, i.e. to trust someone you have never seen before;
Seconly, trust in virtual teams are based on unsimilarity, i.e. to trust someone from different disciplines
or cultural backgrounds; Thirdly, trust in virtual teams has guarantee from no organizations, i.e. to trust
someone from different organizations or sharing no organization culture; Lastly, trust in virtual teams
bears no expectations on the future, i.e. to trust someone who might not be your future partner. All the
above pose great risks to trust.
3.2 Trust challenges confronted with virtual teams after their establishment
(1) Swift trust is hard to build between team members. There in no enough time for virtual team
members to build trust in each other through gradual understanding and communication, therefore, swift
trust needs to be built in virtual teams at the beginning. While swift trust is based on deep
communication, confined by time and space limitations, virtual team members are unable to communite
face to face, which poses difficulties to building swift trust between the members.
(2) Communication between team members is not smooth. Compared with traditional teams, virtual
teams are more likely to have communication problems. Study shows that face-to-face communication
remove misunderstanding and estrangement and enhance understanding and belief best. The dependance
of virtual teams on information technology and network deprives their members of face-to-face
communication. Furthermore, the instability of network communication such as problems with
information technology suspends the ongoing communication.
(3) Cultural differences exist between virtual team members. Members are selected according to the
requirements of the project to be undertaken. They probably come from different countries or regions
and have different social and cultural backgrounds, therefore, it is inevitable for them to face conflicts
with regard to their personal views or ways of handling problems in their communication. This will
undoubtedly bring great difficulty in building and maintaining trust between team members.
(4) The relations between members are complicated and changeable. The roles of virtual team
members change as the team develops, which makes the partnership unstable. One may play parts in
several teams at the same time, and as the task processes, some may leave while some others join. In
addition, members belong to different departments and have their own interests, so relations between
team members might be delicate, both cooperative and competitive. All these prevent trust from being
buit between team members.
4. Human resources management strategy for trust enhancment in virtual teams
A virtual team is an organization arrangement with sharings of resources, risks and benefits, by joining
in which members obtain competitive edge, and coordination between individuals is an important
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approach to a sustainable competitive advantage for the team. Only through sound management can
trust be guaranteed in team members and competitive advantage acquired and sustained for the team.
Analysis is undertaken as to how to enhance team members’ trust and loyalty from the three important
aspects of recruitment, training and performance assessent in human resources management.
4.1 Recruitment strategies in human resources management
To guarantee rich trust atmosphere in virtual teams, individual characteristeics should be taken as one of
the recruiment standards when teams are established. Whether the person interviewed has high trust
tendency and supreme professional skills should draw special attention. As important elements of trust,
uprightness and benign concern towards others should also be taken into consideration when building a
team.
Plenty of work needs to be done before a candidate is selected into the team: (1) set performance
standards required by the position to be set up; (2) collect samples of outstanding employees in these
positions and make analysis and selection; (3) Collect information on the characteristics of candidates
selected through approaches like conducting interviews and then analyze the information; (4) fix quality
models of positions, according to which candidated is selected. In this process, trust is established in
detail as quality requirements of the positions to be carried out. If it goes smoothly, it will be a great step
forward to overcome the challenge of the trust fragility in virtual teams
Proper weight should be put on the candidate’s reputation, past experience etc. before he is employed.
Those who are considered outstanding ususlly regard each other as reliable people, though they might
not have cooperated before. Their professional accomplishments and reputation in their own fields
strikes favorable impressions on each other, and respect on each other’s achievements in work helps
form the initial trust in the team. It is better to choose those who have pleasant cooperation with others
in a virtual team or those who have virtual work experience or successful virtual cooperation with
various people.
In one word, it is the principal task of human resources management in trust-based virtual teams to
judge and select virtual team candidates sensiblely to make sure that those selected are trustworthy.
4.2 Human resources training strategy
Training and development are helpful in increasing trust tendency in virtual team members, improving
their working skills, enhancing their recognition of the team’s goals, deepening their understanding of
each other’s cultures to promote their communication, all of which can promote greatly the trust in
virtual teams.
(1) Trainging to enhance team members’ trust tendency. According to the recognition acquisition
theory, people’s trust in others derives from the their personal experience. Those who are rarely cheated
in the past are willing to trust people. On the contrary, those who are taken in in contact with others are
inclined to be suspicious. The extent of people’s trust in others varies from person to person due to their
different growing backgrounds and social experiences. Trust tendency of virtual team members can be
strengthened through training. After employers get trained and educated, they are more willing to trust
others.
(2) Training to enhance their recognition of the common goals. Due to the different sources and
inconvenient communication between team members, personal goals of the members are possibly
different from that of the team, which will weaken the force rather than help form composite force,
making the teamwork ineffective. Therefore, the team’s purposes and objectives should be known by all
the members at the very beginning after its foundation and taken as their own goals. There should be
regular exchange of the team’s current operating status. Members should be asked to make
self-examination and adjust their work to the right track, if there is any departure from the team’s
general objectives and purposes.
4.3 Human resources performance assessment strategy
The performance assessment of virtual team members is made from two aspects, namely quality and
quantity, no difference in essence from ordinary assessment. It is a process where systematic comments
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on each team member’s strengths and weaknesses are made so as to find the reason for his deficiency in
work and help him formulate corrective meausures. Objective and just performance assessment is not
only inspiring to the member but also has effect on his trust in others in the team.
The standards employed to assess one’s performance should be a combination of the work result, the
work behavior and individual features, which is also based on the quality model in recruiment. Work
result indicators include quality of the work completed, time that finished products are submitted, degree
of client’s satisfaction, cost, etc.; work behavior indicators include his participation in team activities,
his efforts involved to complete the task, etc.; individual features of the member include abiding by
commitments, concern about others, being cooperative, etc..
The method of 360 degree performance assessment is at the top of the assessment methods of the team
members’ performance. Team leaders being not in the same working place with the assessed, the
informantion used to assess one’s performance mainly come from his self-evaluation, comments from
his colleagues in the team and his clients. The period assessed should depend on the progress of the
project. For the speciality of the virtual environment, attention and guidance should be given to team
members in their work at ordinary time, otherwise, the team’s perfomance might be affected by a certain
member.
5. Conclusion
The advantages of the virtual team and its wide application make the attraction of the Internet and
communication technology realized by many organizations. Meanwhile, the highly numeralized
atmosphere pose more challenges to the trust and loyalty of virtual team members and make human
resources management more complicated and diversified, and any fault might weaken the team’s
interaction and prevent it from reaching an agreement, even worse, influence the team’s performance
and make the management out of control. But we are convicted that sustainable trust will be built with
the rapid and drastic social changes on the trust mechanism of intangible as well as tangible social assets.
Only with trust between supervisor and team members and agreements obtained through their
negotiation on equal basis can self-management and high efficiency be realized in the virtual team, thus
leading to greater success.
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