In today’s world when budgets are tight and schedules even worse, virtual meeting solutions are needed to reduce costs without affecting productivity and profits. Cutting edge virtual meeting technology makes it possible to connect, communicate and build teams across nations and boundaries and using web conferencing platforms to hold virtual meetings is one of the quickest and easiest ways in which people based at different locations can collaborate.

More and more, companies are reworking their strategies and operational methods to keep costs down, and virtual meetings can influence cost cutting  in a big way. Unproductive travel for traditional meetings is being rapidly replaced by the web meeting. Virtual meetings is the collaboration tool of today, and tomorrow.

Virtual Meetings Reduce Distance

Virtual meetings have made geographical distance no longer a factor in connecting and team-building. The advent of the Internet and the information explosion has opened up many new avenues in communications. Now with virtual meetings, companies can hire the best talent across the world without having to worry about costs, and a whole new approach to teamwork is being introduced. Teams that can bridge the distance gap will win a clear competitive advantage, backed up with regular virtual meetings, shared space technologies, chat, e-mail, blogs, telephone conference calls and other digital tools.

Communication in Virtual Meetings

Ongoing, direct, one-to-one communication is critical to maintain or even create trusted, reliable and effective online team partnerships. Using virtual meetings can make previously distant and disconnected employees, finally feel like part of the team. Virtual meetings make it easy to establish communication between globally dispersed teams.

Frequent, short communication works better with a virtual team than occasional, long online meetings. Regular contact helps enhance motivation and bonding among team members and strengthens collaborative opportunities. Using a virtual meeting can drive employee productivity and help you achieve business results you never thought possible.

Objectives

When using virtual meetings, it’s important for you to establish a clear objective. The team must know the purpose of their coming together; there must be total clarity of objectives and goals and the team leader must share these with the members. With a virtual meeting, you can conduct a PowerPoint presentation with a question and answer session. These powerful features can do wonders as far as information sharing is concerned. The members of the team must be encouraged to participate actively in virtual meeting sessions, so that there is a sense of belonging and involvement.

The Creativity Factor in Virtual Meetings

A company may lose something intangible by eliminating face-to-face meetings, but that can be mitigated through creative virtual meeting techniques. Collaboration through virtual meetings can have the same successes as face-to-face collaboration.  The creativity factor can take several forms, from pairing off two participants, to simulation of scenarios and role play, brainstorming sessions and time-bound rapid opinion polls to establish the group’s stance on basic issues.

Doing something productive and having a good time is something which would appeal to most people, and it’s an ingredient which accelerates teamwork and collaboration. It’s critical for your team to feel connected and part of a larger whole. When you use virtual meetings for collaboration, your employees will feel like they are truly a part of something, adn as a result your businesses efficiency and productivity will greatly increase.

Professional Development

In every organization, employees relish activities which enhance professional expertise and process efficiency. Virtual meetings do this and more. You can use them to dramatically raise employee morale and self-worth. One of the ways is an interactive virtual meeting with a senior executive of the organization, where all participants are encouraged to ask questions.

There could be virtual meetings on specific skill sets where the team members are asked for feedback, driving new ways of doing old jobs, and employees with exposure to online collaboration tools could drive innovative concepts on a regular basis. The virtual meeting is definitely a tool that your organization must look at to drive performance of your globally dispersed teams.