Face-to-Face Communication versus Virtual Meetings By: Group 9: Joseph Guagenti, Valerie Forbai, Rachel Wall, Keith Dempsey, and Amanda Soder
Face-to-Face Communication
Virtual Communication
Introduction:
In todays corporate environment, many organizations are forming virtual teams. These allow companies to access individuals and resources from all over the world and to maximize their intellectual and networking capitals. The purpose of these virtual teams is to enable individuals to collaborate information and accomplish workplace tasks without the inconveniences of traditional face-to-face communication.
Many communication technologies have been invented in order to make these teams possible. These technologies include: cell phones, voice mail, e-mail, instant messaging, teleconferencing, and audio and video-conferencing. Although these technologies have made communication broader, faster, and easier, there is a debate as to whether or not it is as effective. The variety and access of these new technologies has raised a difficult question among most virtual teams. Individuals now must be concerned with choosing the best and most effective medium for conveying their message.
The increase of technology in the twenty-first century has altered the way that individuals in organizations communicate. Factors associated with technology in virtual teams include permanence, symbolic meaning, experience and familiarity with virtual operations, time constraints, organizational functional cultures, and access to technology training and support. These differ from the elements that are correlated with face-to-face communication in the sense that they are all asynchronous, whereas as face-to-face is synchronous.
Face-to-Face Meetings:
Face-to-face meetings are real time interactions where people working toward the same goal have in-person discussions about what needs to be done. F2F meetings allow for people working together to actually meet one another and make real first impressions with regards to the verbal and nonverbal cues they use when approaching one another. Although other technologies may have seemed to replace F2F communication; it is still considered the most effective for virtual teams who are meeting for the first time. This type of communication enables these individuals to develop a better understanding of their co-workers. This usually allows for a more productive and successful team.
The Positive & Negatives of Face-to-Face Meetings:
Despite the fact that some may conclude that F2F communication is becoming outdated, there are still various situations and instances in which F2F is considered the most appropriate medium. F2F communication offers characteristics that cannot be replaced by virtual technologies. One of the most significant is the presence of the human body. The goal of most virtual technologies is replicate that aspect; although many have come close, this feat has not yet been achieved.
The characteristics of F2F communication that are considered most valuable among virtual teams are: eye contact, the ability to convey facial expression and gestures, body language, appearance, the ability to gauge the other party's interest and understanding, and the fact that it is synchronous. All of these features enhance the relationships within virtual teams. Instances in which F2F interactions may occur for virtual teams include meetings, eating together, and organization- related events.
As the workforce becomes more dependent on virtual teams and technologies, F2F becomes harder to achieve. The negative factors associated with F2F include, time, travel, and cost. These dynamics interfere with an individual's ability to communicate in F2F settings because it requires more of an effort and committment.
Pros:
Nonverbal Communication: Nonverbal communication includes: body language, eye contact, facial expressions, and appearance. This type of communication enables individuals to reinforce their message and key objectives that are considered important.
Ability to gauge one’s interest or understanding: This feature is only possible during F2F communication. In addition to our own nonverbal expressions, others have the ability to convey their thoughts and comprehension through facial expressions and other nonverbal and verbal actions that are only possible to read during F2F interactions.
Synchronous: The fact that F2F communication is synchronous, allows for immediacy in response time and reaction. Virtual technologies usually allow for people to have time to respond and collect their thoughts, real time interaction requires people to react quickly and make them more inclined to say what they are truly thinking.
Cons:
Time: F2F interactions may be considered time consuming. This deters individuals from engaging in this type of communication; especially when it can be replaced by a virtual technology. Not all interactions have to be F2F; this is when choosing the appropriate medium is critical.
Travel: Although travel may be associated it with time, it is a broader aspect that also often creates obstacles for people who are trying to engage in F2F communication. Travel may even be impossible for individuals who are part of virtual teams and distributed workforces.
Cost: The cost of F2F communication is often overlooked and underestimated. The cost of this type of communication includes: gas, clothing, and outings. These are traits that virtual communication does not require, which helps contribute to its appeal.
Accessability: F2F communication does not provide the accessability that virtual communication can provide. In order for F2F communication to be successful, individuals must have compatiable schedules. This scenerio is very rare considering corporate America's busy schedule.
The Positive & Negatives of Virtual Meetings:
The use of virtual communication technologies has changed the way we live our daily lives especially in the business setting. There have been quite a few new technologies that have been introduced in the work environment. Some of these technologies have made working with one another faster and more convenient, however there is a price to pay for only using these technologies to accomplish work related tasks. The loss of F2F, which is typically associated with building trust among coworkers, is a large part of work relationships that is missed when working strictly with virtual technologies .
Pros:
Convenience: Not everyone can be in the same room at the same time. With many people abandoning the typical 9am-5pm work schedule the ability to use technologies to still meet and communicate with coworkers no matter where they may be is definitely a positive advantage.
Location: The ability to work with people across the globe without having to actually come together and meet. Instead using technologies such as email, videoconferencing and so on allows people from all over the world to be able to meet and do business with just a click of a button.
Scheduling: Not everyone in a company works from the same office or is in the office everyday so scheduling a meeting becomes complicated. With the use of technologies the employees could be virtually anywhere in the world but still able to log on for a meeting or a conference call. Scheduling meetings becomes far less complicated with the ability to be at work virtually.
Cost effectiveness: Using virtual technologies to bring together people for work related issues allows for a lot less spending. Flying in clients or business partners having to spend money on airfare, hotel accommodations and transportation could become quite costly over time. However, using virtual technologies is a way to keep costs low but still allows for interaction with clients and business partners easily.
Organization: It is now easier to use technologies to organize work information as a whole. We are able to go paperless in a sense due to the capabilities of storing almost all data in one location such as on a laptop or personal computer. When doing business virtually one is able to send and share large amounts of information by sending coworkers files across the Internet instead of having to waste so much paper.
Cons:
Loss of Face-to-Face: Strictly using communication technologies allows for the loss of face-to-face communication. Face-to-face communication is typically regarded as the most effective form of communication and is associated with trust building. By only meeting virtually in a work related setting it becomes hard to gain trust and strengthen relationships of those working together.
Trust Building: Because virtual communication technologies such as e-mail and videoconferencing lack certain cues such as eye contact, facial expressions, and posture there is a loss of personal interactions needed to breed trust. The quality of relationships is being compromised in order to communicate more efficiently using these technologies.
Experience: Live meetings provide a richness that virtual meetings cannot. It is said that many people prefer to experience events first hand and gain the live face-to-face time, which helps build long-term relationships. Using virtual communication technologies is just not the same.
Meeting Face-to-Face: By meeting in a face-to-face situation one is able to gain better knowledge of who someone is, their personality, and how they operate. After meeting someone face-to-face it may change the way you communicate virtually because you now have a better idea of whom you are speaking with. If communication with someone is strictly via virtual technologies one may never get a true sense of whom they are doing business with. This in turn could hurt the business relationship due to the fact that there was never a personal meeting to gain a more specific knowledge of the person or people whom they are dealing with.
United States Government via the General Services Administration (GSA)
The General Services Administration (GSA), an agency of the federal government that manages and supports other government agencies, has announced that it will begin implementing virtual meetings for the United States Government in early 2011. The GSA will do this by setting up virtual meeting centers in all of their 11 regional headquarters buildings. The centers, which will include state of the art technology such as high definition picture, aim to reduce travel time and expenses for the federal agencies using them. Also, the GSA wants to be as environmentally friendly as possible, and this will move them in the right direction.
Martha Johnson, an administrator of the GSA explains how virtual meetings fit into their "green" plans.
United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI)
United Natural Foods, Inc. is a North American food distributor with 23,000 locations in the United States and Canada. Every year they hold an annual stockholders' meeting online using virtual web conference technology. Furthermore, each approved guest is given the ability to ask questions and even vote on issues. To make this possible, UNFI gives each stockholder a proxy card containing a 12-digit access code. To add to the virtual theme, UNFI offers a live webcast to those interested in, but not involved with the company.
Kaplan
Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions has a formidable presence on college campuses throughout the country for obvious reasons. One of their tactics to reach their target market is on-campus representatives. These representatives are current students of the campus they represent. Weekly meetings are required for managers to stay on top of each representative's production. Given their hectic academic schedule, however, it is very hard to find time to have these meetings. That is why Kaplan started using online virtual meetings. The managers and representatives "meet" once a week using services such as Skype, iChat, ooVoo, etc. This allows both sides to save time and money and still discuss each week's goals and issues.
National Park Service (NPS)
The National Park Service (NPS) has the challenge of managing all national parks and many national monuments in the United States. To cover all this ground would be nearly impossible for anyone to do, so they use virtual meetings very often to accomplish their goals. They are now experimenting with and tweaking the use of webinars to facilitate communication between the parks themselves. The hope is that the webinars will enable the different parks to more fairly apply for resources from the NPS and understand why their requests have been denied.
Communication Technologies
Overview As face-to-face meetings and virtual meetings bring people together to collaborate on different topics, the technology involved needs to be perfectly fitted if it is going to be maximizing efficiency and performance levels. There are specific tools for all different times of jobs and it goes the same for meetings whether they have a social presence or not; whether they are asynchronous or synchronous.
Synchronous - Existing or occurring at the same time.
Asynchronous - pertaining to a transmission technique that does not require a common clock between the communicating devices.
Groupware Groupware are electronic systems that are integrated between hardware and software allowing for communication and collaborative work. There are two types of groupware; Synchronous & Asynchronous.
Synchronous Groupware Technologies
Desktop & Real Time Data Conferencing
For one or more team members operating out of their own computer workstations, this synchronous form of collaboration gives users the opportunity to store common documents and edit together, use an electronic chat feature sch as instant messaging, collaborate on an interactive whiteboard, and have audio/video content in the process. An advanced version of this same system will incorporate full motion video and it is called "multipoint media".
Electronic Meeting System
Previously used commonly in face-to-face meetings, EMS' are used in decision making situations such as voting or polling, and can be expanded up to a level where groups of people can collaborate anonymously and avoid the grips of social pressure. Idea generation environments, grouping of ideas, outlining with active editing, agenda keeping, and many other meetings where a host needs to control many corespondents will work well with this type of system.
Electronic Display
Electronic display systems are a virtually converted version of a blackboard where users don't have to be in the same room, but can still interact with a whiteboard style graphical interface as if they were in the same room. These systems range from workstation use to having special boards that are interactively connected to others. The pros and cons include but are not limited to the synchronous collaboration of visual ideas and topics where all people can actively see and hear (with audio hookup) what others are doing, although in the event of having a special board, members will have to go to the rooms that include the board.
Asynchronous Groupware Technologies
Email
Email is the most basic of communication collaboration technologies as it can distribute information over great distances seamlessly, share data, and explain that which may be to confusing to explain verbally. It is essentially a digital version of postal mail, maintaining the asynchronous nature of postal mail, and it can be transferred effectively over all time zones. Key advantages are that emails not only can maintain a "thread" where a conversation goes back and forth, but it also maintains a written history of the conversation which makes it easier to track idea development and conversational patterns.
Personal Computing Devices
These systems are the ultimate in employee efficiency allowing group members to access the internet, share files, send emails, make phone calls, receive voice mail, and create content all in one location. personal computing also opens the door for many collaboration mediums in real time discussed in the synchronous section. A problem however is that these systems can sometimes fail, and it creates a persona for employees where they are always on call.
Group Calenders and Schedules
Time coordination and agenda management for groups is one of the most paramount aspects to face-to-face or virtual teams and they can be managed ubiquitously through use of group calendars. These systems range from personal workstation size, up to full enterprise level systems for hundreds of employees. Timezones and environements can be overlooked as the systems will update everywhere, and they can also be linked between customers, vendors, employees, and partners.
Bulletin Boards and Web Pages
As prime locations for sharing ideas and posting messages from many locations, bulletin boards and web pages offer a location with a degree of permenance where people can have many conversations at the same time to save money. As people never meet face-to-face, and there is a degree of informality, there is an inherent issue with low information richness and low social presence. Additionally, due to the informality, important and sensitive topics may be mistreated and handled improperly in this environment.
Non Real Time Database Sharing and Conferencing
With access to reference materials, as well as the stored works of individual team members, these databases will provide a location for remote locating and searching of resources used by the group. A location to store the latest edition of documents as well as team lessons and products for future use, it is a tremendous tool for information sharing in the face-to-face or virtual environment.
Workflow Applications
Workflow applications automate the process of assembly line style procedures which must be carried out on a regular basis. This is used for specially created systems such as filing a particular type of report, are authorizing certain paperwork. It is a useful time saving tool for group members acting as middle men for information transfer.
Choosing a Communication Technology Communication technology varies greatly from one project to the next, and it is by this logic that it is necessary to choose a technology that best accents the users putting it to work. The ability to be an understandable and well used tool is what gives each technological medium its value in the realm of collaboration and each has a classification of synchronous or asynchronous which will have a varying range in efficacy in the work environment.
The key to identifying which collaboration medium best fits a particular group, the assessment of the type of collaboration being handled as well as the necessary attributes it must have should be identified. This means deciding whether or not the medium should track a history of events, be capable of sharing files, stream live audio, share a collaborative workspace, or more, the outcome of the project will hinge on making the right decision. A poorly chosen system, even if it is the most advanced collaboration system, can prove to be completely ineffective when the situation doesn't call for it. Therefore, to choose the proper system, consult Figure F1.
By: Group 9: Joseph Guagenti, Valerie Forbai, Rachel Wall, Keith Dempsey, and Amanda Soder
Introduction:
In todays corporate environment, many organizations are forming virtual teams. These allow companies to access individuals and resources from all over the world and to maximize their intellectual and networking capitals. The purpose of these virtual teams is to enable individuals to collaborate information and accomplish workplace tasks without the inconveniences of traditional face-to-face communication.
Many communication technologies have been invented in order to make these teams possible. These technologies include: cell phones, voice mail, e-mail, instant messaging, teleconferencing, and audio and video-conferencing. Although these technologies have made communication broader, faster, and easier, there is a debate as to whether or not it is as effective. The variety and access of these new technologies has raised a difficult question among most virtual teams. Individuals now must be concerned with choosing the best and most effective medium for conveying their message.
The increase of technology in the twenty-first century has altered the way that individuals in organizations communicate. Factors associated with technology in virtual teams include permanence, symbolic meaning, experience and familiarity with virtual operations, time constraints, organizational functional cultures, and access to technology training and support. These differ from the elements that are correlated with face-to-face communication in the sense that they are all asynchronous, whereas as face-to-face is synchronous.
Face-to-Face Meetings:
Face-to-face meetings are real time interactions where people working toward the same goal have in-person discussions about what needs to be done. F2F meetings allow for people working together to actually meet one another and make real first impressions with regards to the verbal and nonverbal cues they use when approaching one another. Although other technologies may have seemed to replace F2F communication; it is still considered the most effective for virtual teams who are meeting for the first time. This type of communication enables these individuals to develop a better understanding of their co-workers. This usually allows for a more productive and successful team.
The Positive & Negatives of Face-to-Face Meetings:
Despite the fact that some may conclude that F2F communication is becoming outdated, there are still various situations and instances in which F2F is considered the most appropriate medium. F2F communication offers characteristics that cannot be replaced by virtual technologies. One of the most significant is the presence of the human body. The goal of most virtual technologies is replicate that aspect; although many have come close, this feat has not yet been achieved.
The characteristics of F2F communication that are considered most valuable among virtual teams are: eye contact, the ability to convey facial expression and gestures, body language, appearance, the ability to gauge the other party's interest and understanding, and the fact that it is synchronous. All of these features enhance the relationships within virtual teams. Instances in which F2F interactions may occur for virtual teams include meetings, eating together, and organization- related events.
As the workforce becomes more dependent on virtual teams and technologies, F2F becomes harder to achieve. The negative factors associated with F2F include, time, travel, and cost. These dynamics interfere with an individual's ability to communicate in F2F settings because it requires more of an effort and committment.
Pros:
Cons:
The Positive & Negatives of Virtual Meetings:
The use of virtual communication technologies has changed the way we live our daily lives especially in the business setting. There have been quite a few new technologies that have been introduced in the work environment. Some of these technologies have made working with one another faster and more convenient, however there is a price to pay for only using these technologies to accomplish work related tasks. The loss of F2F, which is typically associated with building trust among coworkers, is a large part of work relationships that is missed when working strictly with virtual technologies .
Pros:
Cons:
There are many other pros and cons for meeting virtually in a business setting, to see more visit this link: http://www.kolabora.com/news/2005/01/27/advantages_of_meeting_online.htm
Examples of Virtual Meetings
United States Government via the General Services Administration (GSA)
The General Services Administration (GSA), an agency of the federal government that manages and supports other government agencies, has announced that it will begin implementing virtual meetings for the United States Government in early 2011. The GSA will do this by setting up virtual meeting centers in all of their 11 regional headquarters buildings. The centers, which will include state of the art technology such as high definition picture, aim to reduce travel time and expenses for the federal agencies using them. Also, the GSA wants to be as environmentally friendly as possible, and this will move them in the right direction.
Martha Johnson, an administrator of the GSA explains how virtual meetings fit into their "green" plans.
United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI)
United Natural Foods, Inc. is a North American food distributor with 23,000 locations in the United States and Canada. Every year they hold an annual stockholders' meeting online using virtual web conference technology. Furthermore, each approved guest is given the ability to ask questions and even vote on issues. To make this possible, UNFI gives each stockholder a proxy card containing a 12-digit access code. To add to the virtual theme, UNFI offers a live webcast to those interested in, but not involved with the company.
Kaplan
Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions has a formidable presence on college campuses throughout the country for obvious reasons. One of their tactics to reach their target market is on-campus representatives. These representatives are current students of the campus they represent. Weekly meetings are required for managers to stay on top of each representative's production. Given their hectic academic schedule, however, it is very hard to find time to have these meetings. That is why Kaplan started using online virtual meetings. The managers and representatives "meet" once a week using services such as Skype, iChat, ooVoo, etc. This allows both sides to save time and money and still discuss each week's goals and issues.
National Park Service (NPS)
The National Park Service (NPS) has the challenge of managing all national parks and many national monuments in the United States. To cover all this ground would be nearly impossible for anyone to do, so they use virtual meetings very often to accomplish their goals. They are now experimenting with and tweaking the use of webinars to facilitate communication between the parks themselves. The hope is that the webinars will enable the different parks to more fairly apply for resources from the NPS and understand why their requests have been denied.
Communication Technologies
Overview
As face-to-face meetings and virtual meetings bring people together to collaborate on different topics, the technology involved needs to be perfectly fitted if it is going to be maximizing efficiency and performance levels. There are specific tools for all different times of jobs and it goes the same for meetings whether they have a social presence or not; whether they are asynchronous or synchronous.
Groupware
Groupware are electronic systems that are integrated between hardware and software allowing for communication and collaborative work. There are two types of groupware; Synchronous & Asynchronous.
Synchronous Groupware Technologies
Asynchronous Groupware Technologies
Choosing a Communication Technology
Communication technology varies greatly from one project to the next, and it is by this logic that it is necessary to choose a technology that best accents the users putting it to work. The ability to be an understandable and well used tool is what gives each technological medium its value in the realm of collaboration and each has a classification of synchronous or asynchronous which will have a varying range in efficacy in the work environment.
The key to identifying which collaboration medium best fits a particular group, the assessment of the type of collaboration being handled as well as the necessary attributes it must have should be identified. This means deciding whether or not the medium should track a history of events, be capable of sharing files, stream live audio, share a collaborative workspace, or more, the outcome of the project will hinge on making the right decision. A poorly chosen system, even if it is the most advanced collaboration system, can prove to be completely ineffective when the situation doesn't call for it. Therefore, to choose the proper system, consult Figure F1.
References: