Today, new technology provide users from anywhere around the world to collaborate and communicate with each other through videos and other methods. This is called remote collaboration.

Eventually, in the future, the need of the physical office may completely disappear because of remote collaboration. Work will be done, but the need for a specific place where a group of people need to gather every morning will be gone.

While this still seems to be fiction, a study has shown that remote collaboration is expected to increase significantly over the next few years. We can count on technology to increase the possibilities and even the need for more remote collaboration between organizations. 

However, the study has also shown that there is a lack of policy for remote collaboration in organizations. According to this study, over half (53 percent to be exact) of the remote collaboration organizations are functioning with no policy.

What it means for organizations to remotely collaborate and function with no policy is that mistakes that could be easily avoided are actually made on a regular basis.  According to Joost (News - Alert) Deckers, managing director at Talk & Vision, it means that such organizations are making what he calls “starters mistakes” as well as making wrong investments. He mentioned that a structure is necessary in order to prevent such costly mistakes and what he calls “bridged the physical distance” by an adequate remote collaboration.

The majority of Dutch organizations have underlined the importance of having proper remote collaboration while using remote collaboration technologies. It seems that if such proper remote collaboration can’t be achieved more mistakes will be made and more problems will arise. In order to create a better remote collaboration and better bridged the distance gap, policies need to be created and followed by each organization who wish to collaborate remotely and adequately.