Page 51 - Anne Bruce - Building A HIgh Morale Workplace (2002)

The Effects of Globalization on Morale 31

What Teams of the Future Will
Need to Succeed
In order to manage people globally and maintain their high
morale, you and other leaders must be able to get together with your
people online and review their work.Technology continually takes
giant leaps forward, with software tools that let employees swap mes-
sages, trade documents, edit handouts, and even see and hear one
another. Managers must stay abreast of technologies if they are to hash
out ideas with workers in the UK, interview a new team member in
Bangkok, review and edit some documents with a supervisor in
Prague, get the latest update on a project from a team leader in San
Diego, and kibitz a while with a new hire in Sydney.

The Glue That Bonds—Human Contact

No matter how hard you work to manage people globally, you’ll
find that keeping your people connected and working together
across international and national boundaries is one tall order.

And despite managers’ increased reliance on warp-speed tech-
nology, there’s nothing like old-fashioned one-on-one contact
with people—shaking hands, smiling, chatting over coffee or
tea, having lunch, and

socializing in general. Beware of Online
So whenever possi- Ping-Pong
ble—whether that’s once a When workers are
spread across the globe, setting a
year, twice a year, or four
meeting time can be tricky at best,
times a year—plan to bring
resulting in what’s sometimes called
as many people together “online ping-pong” and, therefore,
as you can. Pick a conven- massive confusion.To avoid the dread-
ient location and have ed ping-pong match, start by selecting
everyone meet there, in the people who should attend the

person. Maybe it’s in online meeting, then pick a meeting
Europe one year and in the time (taking time zones into consider-
ation), and then send out a standard
U.S. the next. Even if you
e-mail meeting invitation with as
spend a few days wrestling
much notice as possible, making it
with mediocre issues
easy for recipients to quickly accept
you’ve wrestled with over or decline.