Can Virtual Reality Support Better Innovation in Teams?

Can Virtual Reality Support Better Innovation in Teams?

Virtual reality has been seen to improve communication and collaboration between colleagues due to the high immersion and the layer of invisibility that it provides. This means that those who would uncomfortable sharing their ideas in a face-to-face environment are more comfortable in this virtual environment.

Consequently, potential innovative ideas that would have been lost in a face-to-face environment are more likely to be expressed within a virtual environment.

 

Why could Virtual Reality more Beneficial than Face-To-Face?

Virtual reality is becoming increasingly popular within team settings which has allowed for hybrid teams to collaborate and thrive in this constantly developing era of technology. The high immersion of virtual reality means that colleagues develop the feeling of sharing the same environment as each other, as if they were there face-to-face, but without the potential uncomfortable feelings that may be apparent in face-to-face environments.

These feelings may include anxiety, embarrassment, and self-consciousness when participating in team activities. However, virtual reality helps to decrease these feelings of social embarrassment due to the layers of anonymity and invisibility (Barak & Gluck-Ofri, 2007; Hooi & Cho, 2013), which can boost productivity, collaboration, and innovation as colleagues are more likely to share their ideas.

 

What tools in Virtual Reality can Support Innovation?

There are specific platforms within virtual reality which can help to foster innovation and collaboration. They use tools such as a pen, which allows for individuals to draw and write on virtual post it notes as well as in the air. The writing, as well as the virtual post it notes, can then be moved around the room using a pointer tool, which means that colleagues do not have to go to the “front of the room” in order to post their ideas upon a white board. This can be a very daunting task for individuals who have high levels of anxiety and would feel very uncomfortable walking to the front of a physical room in front of a number of colleagues. Due to this, virtual reality makes it easier to share concepts and information as everyone can move the items with ease, without the need to physically stand in front of a room full of people.

Additionally, holographic style tools have been implemented within virtual reality platforms, which allows individuals to “physically” interact with the model. For example, there may be a model of a car engine which can be enlarged, inspected, and different components can be removed, redesigned, and altered. This allows for individuals to embrace their creativity as they can change the component with ease, which would not be possible when faced with a physical engine.

 

How can Virtual Reality Improve Team Collaboration?

Virtual reality fosters high levels of immersion and presence, which can increase levels of social interactions between co-workers due to their being less distractions within the physical environment. Additionally, due to the custom environments which are accessible within virtual reality, the participation-based memory effect occurs as the conversations within virtual reality become more memorable due to the differing environments (University of Maryland, 2018). Furthermore, the team building exercises virtual reality accommodates for have been seen to be more effective than traditional methods due to virtual reality decreasing levels of anxiety within individuals (Camara & Hicks, 2019; Harris et al., 2002; Robillard et al., 2010). This means that more collaborative teams can be formed as the almost realistic environment reduces levels of attention loss and stress, which would otherwise hinder collaboration.
The Benefits of Virtual Reality for Both Introverts and Extroverts

One of the main concerns faced with traditional face-to-face collaboration is that introverts may become too overloaded with the social interactions, which can elevate levels of anxiety and cause the individual to withdraw from actively taking part in the activity. However, the levels of invisibility due to the “mask” of the avatar means that those with introversion tendencies feel more comfortable in expressing their ideas and opinions, which improves team collaboration and innovation (Hammick & Lee, 2014). Similarly, those classed as more extroverted are still able to have the increased social interactions that they prefer as the high levels of presence allows for a subjective experience, rather than observational one.

 

How does VRE Implement this?

Here at VRE we use platforms which promote team collaboration and team building, which in turn increases the communication between colleagues and thus innovation. We have found that individuals feel more at ease to speak and communicate their ideas and views across in virtual reality compared to face-to-face environments, but still has the illusion that they have “spent a day” with their colleagues. Due to this, it is important to utilize these findings effectively in order to improve team collaboration and innovation.

 

VRE offers a range of services supporting organisations with broad needs

  • VR Team Building – reconnect your remote teams with incredibly engaging virtual face to face activities
  • VR Leadership Assessment and Development – using the latest VR assessment technology we can tell you if your team is a real team and how they can change their behaviour to be a high performing team
  • VR Hire – we have hire hubs all over the world to help deliver our VR services, so you can use our VR hire to support your own VR training projects and pilots
  • VR Management and Leadership training – we offer a wide range of training across these topics, from half day courses down to 90 min high impact sessions, the beauty of VR is you can now offer much more flexible programme design because there is no travel involved
  • VR Soft Skills training – we offer a wide range of soft skills training for all levels in an organisation, covering the key skills and behaviours essential for productive working in a modern organisation

 

 

Reference

Barak, A., & Gluck-Ofri, O. (2007). Degree and reciprocity of self-disclosure in online forums. Cyberpsychology and Behavior, 10(3), 407–417. https://doi.org/10.1089/CPB.2006.9938

Camara, D. R., & Hicks, R. E. (2019). USING VIRTUAL REALITY TO REDUCE STATE ANXIETY AND STRESS IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: AN EXPERIMENT. Journal of Psychology, 2, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.5176/2345-7929_4.2.100

Hammick, J. K., & Lee, M. J. (2014). Do shy people feel less communication apprehension online? The effects of virtual reality on the relationship between personality characteristics and communication outcomes. Computers in Human Behavior, 33, 302–310. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CHB.2013.01.046

Harris, S. R., Kemmerling, R. L., & North, M. M. (2002). Brief Virtual Reality Therapy for Public Speaking Anxiety. In CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIOR (Vol. 5, Issue 6). www.liebertpub.com

Hooi, R., & Cho, H. (2013). The virtual “me” is the actual me: Self-disclosure in virtual environment. Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 883–892. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2013.546

Robillard, G., Bouchard, S., Dumoulin, S., Guitard, T., & Klinger, É. (2010). Using virtual humans to alleviate social anxiety: Preliminary report from a comparative outcome study. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 154, 57–60. https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-60750-561-7-57

University of Maryland. (2018). People recall information better through virtual reality — ScienceDaily. Science Daily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180613162613.htm

How Virtual Reality can Improve Team Building and Create High Performance Teams

How Virtual Reality can Improve Team Building and Create High Performance Teams

Virtual reality has been shown to effectively improve self-efficacy and further work-related skills, which can also decrease the symptoms of work-related anxiety. Additionally, it is of importance for managers to acquire knowledge around team performance-team dynamics in order to identify the nature of the groups they are working with. Here at VRE, we aim to maximise team building capabilities in order to improve the effectiveness of team building, which in turn leads to high performance teams and superior business results.

 

The Importance of Team Building for High Performance Teams

A stronger unit of employees can be built when team building exercises are effectively implemented, which leads to improves productivity, increases employee motivation, collaboration, trust, and respect. Additionally, this allows for a dynamic team to be built where both employees and managers are able to grow due to the adaptation of mutual values and understanding. According to a multitude of research, effective teamwork is also associated with reduced work errors, improved worker well-being, fewer turnover intentions, greater gob satisfaction, and cost-effective services (Abualrub et al., 2012; Carter & West, 1999; Manser, 2009; Ross et al., 2009).

In terms of the development of high-performance teams, this requires several characteristics needed for three main themes, which are Team Culture, Team Structures, and Team Processes. Team Culture refers to the beliefs, ideals, norms, and expectations present within the team and includes trust, transparency, diversity, and conflict management. Additionally, Team Structures can be defined as the configuration of team relationships that concern the allocation of tasks, team member roles, responsibilities, and authority. This second theme includes creating a shared meaning, accountability, clarity, participation, and leadership. Finally, the third theme, Team Processes, is the way in which team members work with each other in order to be most effect to produce meaningful outcomes. This includes cognitive flexibility, reflection, communication, and readiness for change.

 

Why Virtual Reality Team Building over Traditional Team Building?

It has been illustrated that traditional team building exercises have a negative, mundane stereotype associated with them which can cause inconsistent engagement between co-workers. This is because the more introverted co-workers may take a step back from being fully engaged, as well as others not taking the task seriously. These experiences would yield to lingering negative feelings among team members, which can cause frustration for coaches and managers who may have used significant organizational resources for the team building process. A direct consequence of this is the development of pseudo teams, where a group of employees feel merged rather than having a team relationship. This been seen to be associated with increased levels of work errors, bullying, stress, production stagnation, and resistance to change (West & Lyubovnikova, 2012).

How has Virtual Reality been able to Implement Team Building Exercises?

Remote work has dramatically increased from 5.7% pre COVID-19 pandemic (The Home Office Life, 2022) to 36% in January 2022 (Probert, 2022), which means that new, innovative methods towards team building needed to be implemented. This is because traditional, face to face team building exercises have become more difficult to achieve, as well as becoming more expensive to implement due to the cost-of-living crisis. This highlights the absolute importance of the implementation of new pioneering and cost-effective team building methods.
Virtual reality team building methods allow for a safe, virtual environment in which employees can experiment and collaborate with each other. Additionally, the VR “video game” style of immersion disrupts the mundane stereotypes often associated with traditional team building exercises, therefore allowing for a more effective and enjoyable team build session. Due to this, a natural flow of conversation can be developed between the workforce, which can be used to help identify whom within that workforce has leadership tendencies. In turn, this will allow for employees to establish the important mutual respect and understanding with one another.

 

What are some of the Team Building Exercises in Virtual Reality?

Due to the flexibility virtual reality offers, a wide range of activities can be used, which may bay impossible or too expensive to implement outside of the virtual world. One example of this is the use of an escape room, which is easily accessible in virtual reality, encouraging employees to work together as a team to problem solve and escape. This is an effective team building method as successful communication, teamwork, and respect are required in order to complete the escape room tasks. Additionally, due to the safe space virtual reality offers, it can decrease levels of anxiety within individuals (Camara & Hicks, 2019; Harris et al., 2002; Robillard et al., 2010) as it encourages the quieter members to “step out of their shell” due to the disinhibition effect and immersion. Overall, this promotes a stronger, more productive workforce and an effective, high-performance team.

 

How does Virtual Reality Experiences Incorporate Team Building Tasks?

Virtual team building activities are extremely important due to the rapid changes in workplace environments due to the high number of employees working from home. In a direct response to this, Virtual Reality Experiences provide team building exercises through the use of specialised virtual platforms and activities, which each promote teamwork skills, leadership skills, communication skills, and more. These skills combined help to promote an effective, satisfied workforce, which will increase, productivity, efficiency, and overall reputation of the company. In turn, this generates high performance teams.

 

References

Abualrub, R. F., Gharaibeh, H. F., & Bashayreh, A. E. I. (2012). The relationships between safety climate, teamwork, and intent to stay at work among Jordanian hospital nurses. Nursing Forum, 47(1), 65–75. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1744-6198.2011.00253.X
Camara, D. R., & Hicks, R. E. (2019). USING VIRTUAL REALITY TO REDUCE STATE ANXIETY AND STRESS IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: AN EXPERIMENT. Journal of Psychology, 2, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.5176/2345-7929_4.2.100
Carter, A. J., & West, M. A. (1999). Sharing the burden – teamwork in health care settings – Research Portal | Lancaster University (J. Firth-Cozens & R. Payne, Eds.). Wiley. https://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/sharing-the-burden–teamwork-in-health-care-settings(6e1bcd13-d534-4d55-888f-73b2a74c7ae6)/export.html
Harris, S. R., Kemmerling, R. L., & North, M. M. (2002). Brief Virtual Reality Therapy for Public Speaking Anxiety. In CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIOR (Vol. 5, Issue 6). www.liebertpub.com
Manser. (2009). Teamwork and patient safety in dynamic domains of healthcare: a review of the literature. Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica, 53(2), 143–151. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1399-6576.2008.01717.X
Probert, J. (2022). Homeworking and spending during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Great Britain – Office for National Statistics. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/homeworkingandspendingduringthecoronaviruscovid19pandemicgreatbritain/april2020tojanuary2022
Robillard, G., Bouchard, S., Dumoulin, S., Guitard, T., & Klinger, É. (2010). Using virtual humans to alleviate social anxiety: Preliminary report from a comparative outcome study. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 154, 57–60. https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-60750-561-7-57
Ross, F., Rink, E., & Furne, A. (2009). Integration or pragmatic coalition? An evaluation of nursing teams in primary care. Http://Dx.Doi.Org/10.1080/Jic.14.3.259.267, 14(3), 259–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/JIC.14.3.259.267
The Home Office Life. (2022). 📊 Working from home statistics UK [Updated for 2022] — The Home Office Life. https://thehomeofficelife.com/blog/work-from-home-statistics
West, M. A., & Lyubovnikova, J. (2012). Real Teams or Pseudo Teams? The Changing Landscape Needs a Better Map. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 5(1), 25–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1754-9434.2011.01397.X

Ringelmann Effect

How Big a Team Can We Have in VR Team Building Before We Get Social Loafing

To explore this we need to look at “The Ringelmann Effect”, this was named after a French agricultural engineer, Maximilien Ringelmann, born in the 1860’s (Kravitz & Martin, 1986). This effect is also known as social loafing as Ringelmann noticed a negative correlation between group size and performance per individual, therefore as group size increased, individual performance decreased.

 

Later studies studied the Ringelmann Effect in further detail, which confirmed that this effect occurs in a variety of activities, which can be both physical and cognitive performance tasks (Ingham et al., 1974; Petty et al., 1977). However, identifying this effect was not satisfactory, and researchers strived to develop logical explanations for this occurrence. Kravitz and Martin (1974) suggested that individual performance is limited by the constraints of working within a group as group-work can make it difficult to synchronise maximal performance across team members in relation to tasks. However, Ingham et al., (1974) argued that this could not be the primary reason for a decrease in individual performance and highlighted that this can be due to a reduction in levels of individual motivation. With these results and explanations in mind, it has created a major dilemma for managers, team leaders and coaches. Due to this, it is imperative to identify specific circumstances that can result in this decrease in motivation, and how training within virtual reality can help to overcome these barriers to success.

 

Group Size

It has been shown that group size is a significant contributor to social loafing (Karau & Williams, 1993; Latane et al., 1979), with an increase in group size causing a decrease in individual performance levels (Liden et al., 2004). Interestingly, those categories as high achievers were the most affected by this due to lowering their own efforts in order to match those of their peers in order to maintain equality (Simms & Nichols, 2014). Therefore, it is important when designing training courses and building teams to keep group size at a minimum in order to allow for individuals to achieve their maximum potential.

 

Identifiability

Following on from group size is the idea of identifiability as when group size increases, feelings of anonymity increase and individuals feel less valued and less accountable for their actions (Latane et al., 1979). In order to try combat this, Williams et al., (1981) discovered that social loafing is extinguished when individuals were under the impression that their individual output was being measured. Participants who worked in groups, while under this impression, performed as well as those working alone. On the other hand, when output was not identifiable, individual levels of performance decreased within both conditions of working in a team or alone. This means that those who were previously less motivated than their peers became more motivated as they were able to show their skills to their group and thus develop their potential (Chen et al., 2014; Reeve, 2014). Additionally, when groups are enticed with a valued reward for completing tasks and goals, social loafing diminishes as motivation increases in order to achieve that reward (Zaccaro, 1984).

 

Invisibility

Expanding upon this idea of anonymity within Identifiability is Invisibility, which can be a defence mechanism in order reduce feelings of embarrassment. Research has noted that decreasing levels of Invisibility is not always advantageous as groups who vary in levels of expertise experience an increase levels of impression management, which results in decreased effort due to fear of embarrassment Mulvey et al., 1998).

 

Individuality

It is important to make people aware of their contributions within a group as this decrease’s levels of social loving due to the perception of all group members contributions being the same (Harkins & Petty, 1982). When individuals feel that their value is not fully appreciated by the other group members, their motivation, thus effort, decreases. This idea of individuality can be difficult to achieve within traditional training courses as attention to one individual may be viewed of as a lack of attention to another individual (Synnot, 2016).

 

Fatigue

A final contributor to social loafing is fatigue, which can occur even when the individual desires to give their full engagement (Orden et al., 1998). It must be noted that offline group training triumphs in interaction and engagement, but it cannot prevent individual fatigue which decreases individual performance. Similarly, meeting through computer screens, such as Zoom meetings, have been seen to increase levels of meeting fatigue which reduces levels of engagement and performance (Kavanagh et al., 2021).

 

How can Virtual Reality Reduce these Contributing Factors to Social Loafing?

In regard to Identifiability, virtual reality harbours the ability to remove individual anonymity in a more enjoyable manner. For example, performance can be measured at an individual level such as the use of digital scoreboards, which promotes goal setting for the group and healthy competition within the group (Brown et al., 1998).

Expanding upon reduced anonymity within virtual reality, virtual reality can not only decrease levels of anonymity but also adjust for layers of invisibility. It has been highlighted that virtual environments can improve self-disclosure (Barak & Gluk-Ofri, 2007; Hooi 7 Cho, 2013) as individuals do not suffer from social embarrassment which can occur in face-to-face interactions, such as facial expressions. Additionally, virtual reality can help to prevent the phenomenon known as the “Sucker effect” where individuals perceive that other team members are not giving their full effort and therefore fail to apply maximum effort themselves. This can be due to incorrect inferences about a person’s effort based on non-verbal cues, such as a yawn, therefore virtual reality can alleviate this issue as non-verbal cues can be removed, while allowing the trainer to choose where and when to add them. This allows high control over invisibility and visibility, which is a key advantage virtual reality has to offer compared to other forms of technology, such as Teams meetings. As a result of this, group members feel more comfortable in sharing their difficulties with the group as other group members will put more effort into helping the group members reaching their potential, which also increases their own performance levels (Karau & Williams, 1993).

However, it must be noted that invisibility can also be harmful as people may suffer from the Disinhibition Effect within the virtual world, which can cause them to behave with less kindness due to not physically seeing the human that they are interacting with (Suler, 2004). This idea of dehumanisation has been seen to be a contributing factor of social loafing within technology-heavy workplaces as employees feel less valued as a human being (Alnuaimi et al., 2010). However, advances within virtual reality technology have helped to protect against this due to the use of human, customisable avatars which have been found to increase socially accepted behaviours defined by the offline world in the online world (Bailenson & Yee, 2008).

Moving onto the idea of Individuality, virtual reality training can be specially designed to facilitate group work while giving each member the impression that they are the primary focus of the trainer. This is due to the first-person perspective of virtual reality, which gives the individual feelings of importance and individuality. This also allows for individual feedback while still being immersed in a group setting, meaning that users can remain active and engaged in their current setting, which is often an issue for offline training.
Finally, virtual reality can aid in decreasing levels of fatigue as it offers a blend of group and individual training and also allows for the feelings of full immersion, which Zoom meetings fail to provide. The ability for virtual reality to offer repeated exposure at minimal extra cost is a large advantage over other forms of training as virtual reality applications are not susceptible to human fallacies in repetition tasks, such as bias or subjectivity. These negative feelings towards the training sessions can increase fatigue, therefore virtual reality can combat this and decrease the rate at which fatigue occurs, thus meaning that performance is less hindered.

How do VRE Virtual Reality Experiences Utilize these Findings?

Even though it may be difficult to fully erase social loafing from any work or training group, virtual reality offers a unique experience which is equipped in order to effectively address the contributing factors that lead to social loafing. This means that virtual reality is an advantageous tool for group work, team building, and organisation training as overall individual performance does not decrease at the rate of traditional face-to-face training, and even training through platforms such as Zoom.

 

References

Alnuaimi, O. A., Robert, L. P., & Maruping, L. M. (2010). Team size, dispersion, and social loafing in technology-supported teams: A perspective on the theory of moral disengagement. Journal of Management Information Systems, 27(1), 203-230.
Bailenson, J. N., & Yee, N. (2008). Virtual interpersonal touch: Haptic interaction and copresence in collaborative virtual environments. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 37(1), 5-14.
Barak, A., & Gluck-Ofri, O. (2007). Degree and reciprocity of self-disclosure in online forums. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10(3), 407-417.
Brown, V., Tumeo, M., Larey, T. S., & Paulus, P. B. (1998). Modeling cognitive interactions during group brainstorming. Small group research, 29(4), 495-526.
Chen, F., Zhang, L., & Latimer, J. (2014). How much has my co-worker contributed? The impact of anonymity and feedback on social loafing in asynchronous virtual collaboration. International Journal of Information Management, 34(5), 652-659.
Harkins, S. G., & Petty, R. E. (1982). Effects of task difficulty and task uniqueness on social loafing. Journal of personality and social psychology, 43(6), 1214.
Hoeksema-van Orden, C. Y., Gaillard, A. W., & Buunk, B. P. (1998). Social loafing under fatigue. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(5), 1179.
Hooi, R., & Cho, H. (2013). The Virtual” Me” is the Actual Me: Self-Disclosure in Virtual Environment. In 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 883-892). IEEE.
Ingham, A. G., Levinger, G., Graves, J., & Peckham, V. (1974). The Ringelmann effect: Studies of group size and group performance. Journal of experimental social psychology, 10(4), 371-384.
Karau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of personality and social psychology, 65(4), 681.
Kavanagh, K., Voss, N., Kreamer, L., & Rogelberg, S. G. (2021, March 30). How to Combat Virtual Meeting Fatigue. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-combat-virtual-meeting-fatigue/
Kravitz, D. A., & Martin, B. (1986). Ringelmann rediscovered: The original article.
Latané, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979). Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of personality and social psychology, 37(6), 822.
Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A., & Bennett, N. (2004). Social loafing: A field investigation. Journal of management, 30(2), 285-304.
Mulvey, P. W., Bowes-Sperry, L., & Klein, H. J. (1998). The effects of perceived loafing and defensive impression management on group effectiveness. Small Group Research, 29(3), 394-415.
Petty, R. E., Harkins, S. G., Williams, K. D., & Latane, B. (1977). The effects of group size on cognitive effort and evaluation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3(4), 579-582.
Reeve, J. (2014). Understanding motivation and emotion. John Wiley & Sons.
Schnake, M. E. (1991). Equity in effort: The” sucker effect” in co-acting groups. Journal of Management, 17(1), 41-55.
Simms, A., & Nichols, T. (2014). Social loafing: a review of the literature. Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 15(1), 58.
Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. Cyberpsychology & behavior, 7(3), 321-326.
Synnott, C. K. (2016). Guides to Reducing Social Loafing in Group Projects.
Williams, K., Harkins, S. G., & Latané, B. (1981). Identifiability as a deterrant to social loafing: Two cheering experiments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(2), 303.
Zaccaro, S. J. (1984). Social loafing: The role of task attractiveness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10(1), 99-106.

Do companies need team building?

Do companies need team building?

As VR team building specialists, we explore the necessity of team building for companies. Do companies need team building? There is a surprising amount of evidence that they do.

We know organizations across the globe are developing strategies that are aimed at improving their employee’s performance as it is deeply connected with the overall corporate performance and productivity level (Obiekwe, 2018).

Organizations are focusing on the proactive formation of work teams as a way to improve the performance of individual members to maximize general organizational productivity (Baridam and Nwibere, 2008). This is where team building is one of the most significant methods used by organizations to maximize individual as well as group productivity (Fapohunda, 2013).

What is team building?

Fapohunda (2013) stated that team building involves a variety of activities, presented to organizations aimed at improving team performance. This kind of organizational intervention ensures self-development, positive communication, and the development of leadership, all this leading to the ability to work better as a team to solve problems.

Team building is a process through which a team studies its process of working together and creates a context that encourages the contributions of team members (Chive, Chen, Lu and Lee, 2006). Brandy (2018) states that team building involves helping employees and management alike to learn how to work together as a team. Team building can help with the improvement of interpersonal relationships within the company, increase the motivation of the employees, and it can help with getting to a resolution for organizational conflicts (Kriek 2007).

What are the outputs of team building?

A meta-analysis conducted by Klein and colleagues (2009), based on 60 effect sizes, supports the utility of team building on several outcomes. Some of the most important were goal setting and role clarification. Goal setting and role clarification components create a shared understanding of the task and team.

Osemene (2018) has pointed out that team building can influence the performance of the employees of organizations, in areas such as service delivery, organizational responsiveness, and market value creation for its products and services among others.

Jade (2012) has summarized the benefits of team building as follows:

Improvement of the employee’s morale and leadership skills
Helps target all barriers that hinder creativity
Helps analyze goals and objectives
Enhancement of organizational productivity
Identification of team strengths and the weakness
Additionally, it helps ease conflicts by allowing employees to bond with one another and get to know each other better. It promotes teamwork which is highly important because the teams from an organization, need to efficiently solve the problems that they may come across.

Summary

McQuerrey (2019) asserted that teamwork helps individuals from organizations to work well together, improves productivity, and raises the morale of the organization members. In short, it adds a huge contribution to organizational productivity and effectiveness.

In light of the global Pandemic COVID-19, doing classical team-building activities has become increasingly difficult. Given that, having an alternative for bringing people together is very important. VR technologies involve an immersive sound and visual-based experience, replicating the real world or augmenting its features.

Using VR technologies as a solution has become more accessible over the years ( Patera, Draper & Naef, 2008). VR team building is already used to help increase team performance in a sports or military setting. Whether is a soldier-based simulator or gameplay scenario, the users of the VR technologies can train and improve their abilities, through the realistic environment that is provided (Fan & Wen, 2019).

Concerns may arise about technology replacing face-to-face interaction, but is physical presence essential for effective connection?

Over the years when the internet has taken over, we’ve seen that physical presence is not required all the time for you to connect with someone. Just using messages, videos or your recorded voice can help you get to know people all around the globe. The connection you make with other people is not by any means diminished. VR can take that to the next level, and create an immersive experience where you can meet someone, almost as you would meet them in real life.

You would think that trust between each other, would be the hardest to get if it does not imply face-to-face interactions. Corbit and collaborators (2004) showed that when people work on teams face to face, relative to teams that collaborate virtually, there is no significant difference between their results. Trust emerged in both groups and the virtual team scored higher in the direction of effective performance.

People can use these technologies, to create a team-building experience where they can know each other better, have fun and improve their collaboration. Using VR in this way is relevant for organizations, as team-building has a real significance for improving the overall efficacy of the organization, and is an innovative option in these socially distanced times.

Our VR Team Building and Team Assessment Services

We are the VR team building specialists and we combine the best of team building with the best of VR to create some truly unique experiences for your teams.

We also offer VR team assessment and diagnostics, we can help you determine where your team currently is in terms of team performance and importantly what you can do to move them to a high-performance stage.

Contact us now for an informal chat about your team development needs.

 

References:

Obiekwe, O., Zeb-Obipi, I. & Oparanma, A.O. (2018). Impact of firm-based family culture on employee involvement in Nigerian manufacturing firms. IIARD International Journal of Economics and Business Management, 4(1), 93-101.
Baridam, D. M. & Nwibere, B. M. (2008). Understanding and managing organizational behaviours. Port Harcourt: Sherbrooke Associates
Fapohunda, T. M. (2013). Towards effective team building in the workplace. International Journal of Education and Research, 1(4), 1-12
Brady, D. (2018). The Positive Impact of Team Building. Retrieved from: https://www.totalteambuilding.com.au/the-positive-impact-of-team-building/
Fapohunda, T. M. (2013). Towards effective team building in the workplace. International Journal of Education and Research, 1(4), 1-12.
Kriek, H.S. (2007). A survey of the prevalence and nature of teambuilding interventions in South African organizations. Paper presented at the 12th Conference of the Eastern Academy of Management in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
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