8 Common Challenges of Video Conferencing for Virtual Teams
Video conferencing is one of the most popular virtual communications. It has enabled numerous organizations and enterprises to communicate with each other without face to face connection.
With video conferencing, employees have an exciting way to communicate. However, there’re always both benefits and challenges for everything and it makes no difference to video conferencing. Basically, there are mainly 8 challenges of video conferencing for virtual teams.
8 Challenges of Video Conferencing for Virtual Teams
1. Cultural barriers
Time and time again, differences in culture usually affect many aspects in our world. This is no different when it comes to video conferencing. It is one of the major challenges of video conferencing for virtual teams.
This is seen with the global virtual teams where communication is much more difficult between people from different cultural backgrounds.
2. Non-verbal cues
This is one of the top challenges of video conferencing for virtual teams. This is also seen with the global virtual teams mostly. To be coherent and understand what the other’s intended information, both verbal and non-verbal cues must be well known. It becomes a challenge if neither of the parties involved misunderstand the non-verbal cues.
3. Lack of collegiality
Most virtual team members often say that there is not enough time to even build a formal relationship during their virtual meetings. This always results in lack of collegiality amongst them.
4. Lack of trust in virtual team members
In addition to lack of collegiality that results from failure to build formal relationships, the lack of trust among the virtual team members is a very concerning. Thus, it makes it very difficult to build rapport.
5. Difficult decision making processes
This is another interpersonal challenge of video conferencing for virtual team members. Above 50% virtual team members claim that it is much more difficult to make decisions. It results from failure to express ideas or opinions on virtual teams.
6. Differences in time zones
An amazingly 70% of virtual team members claim that the difference in time zones is a strong barrier. We tend to forget on the different time zones that may clash with scheduled video conferencing schedules.
7. Slow internet connections
It may cause a huge problem when trying to establish a connection or during a communication process, the internet connection slows down.
8. Compatibility issues
It do exists compatibility issues with the video conferencing software. This has to top the list of challenges of video conferencing for virtual teams. It can be very stressful when trying to communicate and an unknown error occurs caused by the software or the computer device itself.
3 Solutions to Above-mentioned Challenges for Video conferencing
There are several ways that help to improve your video conferencing experience and reduce the challenges you face. Here I’d like to recommend 3 useful solutions for you.
1. Quality video conferencing software. If you face compatibility issues or unknown errors with the video conferencing software, you should replace it immediately with a more efficient one.
For example, ezTalks video conferencing provide great functionalities and are very easy to use across the most common three Operating Systems—Android, iOS and Windows.
2. Try as much as possible to build rapport with your virtual teams. You can create an online profile directory for your team members to know more about them including their area of expertise and how they fit to the organization.
3. Use online charts and audio conferences to build a professional relationship with your tea.