The surge in remote work has led to a massive shift towards video meetings for interactions. A simple 5-minute conversation to catch up on project details now has to take place over Zoom or Microsoft Teams. The ease of doing video conferencing and such calls giving some semblance of personal interactions have made video meetings a dominant form of office collaboration. However, it’s important to remember that we don’t have to use video calls to do all communication, and sometimes it’s better to have fewer video conferences.
Check out top five reasons to avoid unnecessary video meetings that kill productivity. Â
Learn More: 5 Things That Are Making Your Virtual Meetings IneffectiveÂ
1. Avoid Runaway Meetings
First and foremost, it should be noted that having tons of virtual meetings can lead to very lax agendas or even ‘meetings for the sake of meetings.’ Having this kind of unstructured, virtual gathering can easily spiral out of control and waste valuable time.Â
Workers themselves appear to have noticed this; a survey by WundamailOpens a new window found that 42% of those surveyed did not feel as though they made any contributions during video calls. By having fewer video meetings, your team will be compelled to treat these interactions less as an opportunity to commiserate and more like a chance to sort out project details. As with in-person meetings, video conferences should be scheduled and follow a set plan for getting work done.
2. Less Stress
Since the start of the pandemic, the concept of “Zoom fatigue†has been a trending search on Google, and this isn’t without good reason. When was the last time that you felt physically better after a video meeting than you did before it? Simply put, video calls can be stressful in general, and even more so than in-person meetings. A large part of human communication is non-verbal and reliant upon specific timing of subtle body languageOpens a new window . Since video can’t capture most of these expressions, your brain has to work harder to follow conversations. Participants will likely have to ask for clarification more frequently than they would in person. Furthermore, if there are transmission delays in the video beyond 1.2 seconds, this will contribute to participant stress and anxietyOpens a new window because those listening will perceive the speakers as being less attentive and therefore with more negativity than they would otherwise.
3. More Uninterrupted Work Time
While we’re all tempted at some point to try multitasking to catch up on things, quickly switching between tasks has inherent inefficiencies that can actually reduce productivity by as much as 40%Opens a new window . Alternating your attention between even similar tasks will still use different areas of your brain, thereby delaying your ability to put full focus on that new activity. If you’re spending a large part of your day in video meetings, you’re likely also doing other tasks like checking texts, responding to emails or crunching some numbers last-minute. The unfortunate reality is that you’re probably just doing both things poorly: you’ll miss key details from the discussion, and that email response isn’t getting the attention it needs. Fewer video meetings will result in longer spans of uninterrupted work time, which will let you take care of those other tasks, while ensuring that the call participants are more engaged.
Learn More: Beyond Virtual Meetings: 6 Popular Collaboration Tools to Boost ProductivityÂ
4. Better Communication
Given that conversations over video calls are more difficult to follow than if the same meetings were in-person, it goes without saying that there are more communication problems associated with video meetings. Video buffering and technical difficulties can cause participants to miss out. Important details may be casually mentioned and thereby easily missed, resulting in project delays or even more serious ramifications. While there are certainly cases where real-time verbal discussions are necessary, conveying key points of information is better left to an unambiguous email.
5. Fewer Distractions
Now that so many people have been turned into remote workers, we realize that not everyone has a home office set aside for work and video conferencing. While the occasional gaffes with intruding pets and children can be laughed off as charming, it’s clear by now that these types of distractions are sure to occur regularly and hinder work productivity. Participants may be distracted from the topic at hand and an entirely different train of thought could take over the meeting. If video calls are happening very frequently and somewhat spontaneously, it can be harder to ensure that your or your coworkers’ call environments are calm enough to keep everyone on the task at hand.Â
Do you think too many video meetings drain productivity? Let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!