8.1 What is a virtual team?

A virtual team is one whose primary means of communicating is electronic, with only occasional phone and face-to-face communication, if at all. However, there is no single point at which a team ‘becomes’ a virtual team (Zigurs, 2003). Virtual working offers benefits to both organisations and individuals. Benefits to the organisation include:

• people can be hired with the skills and competences needed regardless of location
• in some cases working across different time zones can extend the working day
• it can enable products to be developed more quickly
• expenses associated with travel and relocation can be cut
• carbon emissions can be reduced.

Benefits to the individual include:

• people can work from anywhere at any time
• physical location is not a recruitment issue
• travelling expenses and commuting time are cut
• relocating is unnecessary.