The increased use of virtual teams during the Covid-19 pandemic: implications for psychological well-being

Abstract

Organizations have increasingly moved toward decentralized and globalized work processes with the advent and improvement of information and communication technologies, which accelerated the implementation of virtual teams. While researchers and practitioners have previously debated the effectiveness of remote working in virtual teams by weighing its advantages and disadvantage, working remotely in virtual teams has become the new normal after COVID-19. Various challenges of working remotely in virtual teams have significantly affected employees’ psychological well-being. This study aims to (a) synthesize the literature on virtual teams focusing on the definition, antecedents, and outcomes, (b) review the literature on the relationship between virtual teams and psychological well-being, (c) share two practical cases, and (d) offer implications for HRD professionals to improve virtual team members’ psychological well-being. This study contributes to the field of HRD as it addresses several theoretical and practical limitations of the virtual team literature (e.g., lack of an integrative definition, lack of a comprehensive nomological network of virtual teams, lack of studies on psychological well-being in virtual teams). More importantly, since virtual teams have not been explored well in the HRD literature, the findings provide relevant and viable implications on psychological well-being for HRD practices as well as HRD research.