Research: How Virtual Teams Can Better Share Knowledge

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Research: How Virtual Teams Can Better Share Knowledge

Summary

This study looks at how managers can facilitate their employers to share knowledge with one another. Although this study was done in a physical work environment, it shows that these results can be even more important within a virtual setting-- when communication can have additional barriers.

Key Points/Findings

• "Workers who participated in guided meetings with a randomly chosen partner realized a 24% increase in sales productivity, on average, during the four weeks that the meetings took place. Worker pairs who only received explicit incentives saw a 13% lift in performance during these same weeks."

• "The increase in productivity for those in guided meetings persisted well after the formal meetings ended. Several months later, workers who participated in these meetings averaged 18% higher sales production than those who had not. By contrast, the group that received incentives alone had no long-term gains."

• "The greatest beneficiaries of the meetings were employees who had been paired with high-performing peers. The findings in the study suggest that discussing one’s job-specific problems with high performers, in just a single meeting, can have long-lasting performance implications. The key is for management to create opportunities — and directives — to ensure that such interactions occur in the first place."

• "Over the 24 weeks that we tracked sales data, the firm realized a 7-figure increase in revenue among those who participated in the guided meetings. The implementation cost was less than $15,000."

• IceBreaker for Bots is a way for workers to schedule times with one another: “The application has ‘made a huge difference in helping teams be more connected, inclusive, energizing, welcoming of new and remote teammates, and ultimately more emphatic and effective”

Citation

Sandvik, J., Saouma, R., Seegert, N., & Stanton, C. (2020, November 02). Research: How Virtual Teams Can Better Share Knowledge. Retrieved November 09, 2020, from https://hbr.org/2020/11/research-how-virtual-teams-can-better-share-knowledge?ab=hero-subleft-2