What Makes Virtual Meetings Ineffective

With the entire business world and corporate sector shifting to remote work, there hasn’t been much communication happening offline. Everything is virtual because there is no other way to stay in contact with employees and coworkers. 

In this situation, video conferencing solutions have proven to be a boon and have allowed businesses to keep functioning by coordinating work with their employees through virtual meetings. But it is crucial to ensure these meetings don’t end up wasting precious employee time.

Firstly, you need a top-notch video conferencing tool that is easy to use. There are various virtual meeting software with intuitive user-interface that allow you to seamlessly connect and discuss work. Using a reliable software will prevent any time getting wasted due to technical glitches.

Apart from software issues, here are 5 other aspects that make virtual meetings ineffective:

No agenda:

A meeting with no agenda is sure to take too much time. Discussions without any solid preparations keep the participants confused. They may not pay enough attention in case they are not made aware of the gravity of the topic being discussed. This makes the meeting ineffective and vague.

To prevent this from happening, managers must always share a well-structured agenda before hosting a virtual meeting. This allows everyone to free up their schedule and be focused on the discussion at hand.

Too many meetings:

Although there is no other way to stay in touch with employees working remotely, hogging up their entire time by conducting meetings is sure to make them unproductive. Spending too much time on virtual meetings will leave them with hardly any time to actually do any work.

A good way to balance this out is to keep meetings focused only on those topics that are crucial to be discussed in everyone’s presence. You can leave other topics for emails and instant messaging apps.

Adding too many people:

With the advancement in technology, a virtual meeting software now makes it possible to add multiple people in a single meeting. When managers misuse this feature and add the entire team, not everyone will get a chance to contribute. Also, if the meeting involves people who are not required for that particular discussion, this will turn out to be a huge loss of their time.

The solution to this is to ensure only those are included in the meeting who are indispensable for the planned discussion. This way everyone gets the opportunity to voice out their opinion and the meeting stays productive.

Also Read: How to make your home a comfortable working place

Lack of etiquettes:

Poor meeting etiquettes can waste a lot of time and energy. When employees keep crossing each other to put their point ahead, or do not take the effort to find a quiet spot for participating in the meeting, the entire vibe of the meeting becomes casual and nobody ends up getting any clarity.

Ensure that your employees have been educated about virtual meeting etiquettes with a little help from the HR management professionals. The HR team can circulate an email specifying how employees are expected to behave during virtual meetings.

One-sided conversations:

Meetings are the most effective when everyone is involved and contributing to the discussion. When managers keep talking endlessly without involving the participants, they can soon start feeling disengaged and bored. 

This can be prevented if managers take the necessary steps to boost engagement. One of the best ways is to ask employee opinion at the end of every small aspect of the topic being discussed. This will make the employees feel valued and assure managers that they are paying attention to the conversation.

Conclusion:

It is particularly important that virtual meetings stay effective as any wrong or incomplete information getting passed on can cause inconsistencies in the workflow. Make sure to reiterate the key points of the discussion towards the end of the call and leave time for employees to ask questions they may have.