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UAE: Expert reveals how students can excel in a post-Covid workplace

Global virtual teams and digitally-driven remote working will be the future of the office

Dr Norhayati Zakaria, Associate Professor, Faculty of Business, University of Wollongong in Dubai, discusses what workplaces will look like in the future and what skills do students need to develop skills to thrive in a digitally-driven world.

Khaleej Times spoke with Dr Zakaria for her insights on the emerging trends.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

Global virtual teams (GVTs) and virtual teaming are a ‘once-dreamed’ structure of multinational organisations, yet today it has become inevitable. Is this assumption correct?

Digital transformation has been one of the key critical learnings from the ongoing pandemic, with its adoption reaping benefits across sectors. The need for GVTs is more important than ever in today’s context. The future of workplaces the world over is digitally-driven.

For students in university amidst a heightened Covid-19 era and navigating virtual classrooms, the transition to a remote work system will most likely be a seamless one. This switch to a remote way of working with the introduction and establishment of global virtual teams, poses an important question: “Do we really need a physical office anymore?”

While the pandemic is being dealt with differently across the world, it is likely that virtual teaming will become a permanent fixture even post-pandemic through the introduction of hybrid models or complete reliance on a virtual way of working.

A recent McKinsey survey revealed that 30% of the pool of candidates surveyed were likely to switch jobs if returned to on-site work in its entirety. Employees and employers both have reported to show resilience across virtual environments in the face of the pandemic, and it makes perfect business sense to leverage this resilience and efficiency through concepts such as Global Virtual Teams (GVTs).

Has Covid-19 necessitated organisations to speedily adopt and adapt to a transformed workplace with new norms such as virtual teaming and remote workplace without exception?

In April 2021, Deloitte conducted a survey among 275 of its clients to understand the consensus on the future of workplaces.

As per the survey outlining the return-to-workplace sentiment, 32 per cent of candidates were worried about “maintaining company culture” owing to the shift, 26 per cent were worried about whether a return to the workplace might affect performance; 19 per cent of candidates were worried about continued effective collaboration; 13 per cent of candidates expressed concern about unbiased treatment among hybrid, remote and onsite workers.

A total of 10 per cent of candidates were doubtful about transitioning efficiently into the physical workplace after getting attuned to remote work for about a year. According to Global Workplace Analytics, just 3.6 per cent of the US workforce worked from home in 2018.

These numbers put the state and outlook of the current and future workplace in perspective. Organisations have taken to remote work at their pace, but the remote-first work attitude has become pre-dominant and hard to overlook.

Explain how GVTs promote working together at a distance with people of culturally diverse backgrounds that are heavily reliant on social and collaborative computer and technology-mediated platforms yet are challenged with disparate time zones and incongruent values and attitudes.

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, technology has been used to foster a communicative and collaborative environment. While remote working and the consequential rise of global virtual teams is unfamiliar (Global Workplace Analytics claims that remote working grew 173 per cent between 2005 and 2018), there has been a noticeable increase in this way of working.

Amid all of this, cross-cultural virtual teams have been on the rise, driven by globalisation and advancement of digital connectivity. While there are a lot of benefits of tapping into a culturally-diverse pool of talent, it is important to understand that this diversity can also bring about a set of challenges, impeding the very collaboration and communication workplaces strive for.

While deploying GVTs, employers and employees must collaborate to leverage appropriate communication methods, tap into team diversity, generate actionable virtual work-cycle and meetings, and ensure external assessments to better recognise the team.

How emotionally attuned are people to continue working at a distance when values and beliefs are divergent?

A multicultural environment births a multi-perspective environment and thus, a productive and positive work environment. Responsiveness and accessibility are key for a team to progress and work collaboratively, overcoming distance and cultural barriers.

A report titled Managing work-related psychosocial risks during the Covid-19 pandemic issued by the International Labour Organization (ILO) sums this up aptly and suggests various measures to tackle the obstacle of distance in a remote work scenario. The report hinted at promoting social interaction among remote workers, by setting virtual coffee breaks during working hours and encouraging break-time chatter.

Divergent beliefs can do better for a team than congruent approaches.

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Elaborate on how culturally agile teams need to be prepared for the possibility of encountering variations in work practices, work culture, work structures and thus be ready to formulate strategies to accommodate with the changed landscape of virtually teaming without barriers.

Globally, work practices, framework, culture, and structure undergo several variations; the onus to chalk strategies to navigate such variations lie with employers and policy and decision-makers. The remote work landscape is constantly changing, and this dynamism calls for increased agility and greater cultural sensibilities.

Effective virtual collaboration tools should be leveraged to replicate or resemble an in-office interaction. But tools can only offer a vision; an agile way of working can empower that vision and generate actionable results.

- joydeep@khaleejtimes.com