Hybrid working is here to stay and brings so many positives to employees. It is crucial, however, to have the best tools to enable productivity and maintain high standards, even though people may not be in the same space as each other. But organisations need to support staff wellbeing and productivity by being aware of new situational dynamics that could lead to hybrid working being perceived as a burdensome privilege that adversely affects productivity.
Hybrid meetings often comprise a mix of in-person and remote attendees, and it’s the job of meeting chairs and leaders to make the participants feel included. Smart meeting tech makes inclusion easier though ‘setting the scene’ which helps encourage engagement.
MEETING FATIGUE
Having a camera on your face, and your face on a screen that is only around 50cm from someone else’s watchful eyes is not how we naturally look at each other. Who knows what subconscious or peripheral information, that normally keeps us engaged, gets missed? One thing we do know is there is such a thing as virtual meeting fatigue and it is more likely to be a result of mental underload and boredom than overload.
Research has discovered that highly engaged employees are able to stay active during virtual meetings, whereas workers with low engagement more often find virtual meetings to be very tiring. This is especially true when cameras are turned off, as participants may then start doing other tasks at the same time as listening. Once multitasking starts, engagement inevitably falls away, as doing more than one task requiring cognitive attention is mentally taxing.
While making meetings more engaging is certainly partly the responsibility of the organiser (in terms of relevant content, reason and in-meeting management), organisations can also take steps to help by setting the scene in terms of supporting effective meetings with the right infrastructure.
Virtual meeting fatigue should not be allowed to stop meetings being productive and there are a number of things that can be done to bring in-person energy to meetings even when the participants are a mix of those physically present and remote:
Keep cameras on! Try to build a culture where virtual participants in hybrid meetings feel comfortable about keeping their cameras on. This should encourage participants to listen closely and share visual and virtual responses during meetings.
Invest in the tech! Smart meeting devices ensure that all meeting attendees feel as much part of the event as everyone else, even if remote. This means that they pick up everyone’s voice clearly wherever their location and that everyone on the screen is visible.
Change it up! Remember the excited buzz when the teacher said the next lesson would be taken outside? With the right smart meeting devices, a hybrid environment meeting can be conducted from the factory floor or outdoor space (weather permitting), for example. Hybrid is exactly that: it doesn’t just need to apply to in-office and remote workers.
