“If you’re not familiar with the idea of ‘distributed teams’ – or virtual teams – yet, you will be soon,” says Michael Hershfield bluntly. The vice president of product and commercialization at WeWork points out that distributed teams—composed of employees who work remotely, rather than at a centralized, physical headquarters—are on the rise, especially among small- and medium-sized businesses, between 11 to 999 employees.

The move to partially and fully distributed teams is driven by the growing competition to attract and retain the best talent, the increasing number of workers entering the gig economy, the need to find new cost savings and work efficiencies…