How to run higher conferences along with your hybrid group

When meetings are such a big part of your day, they should be worth the time and effort to attend.

According to a poll conducted with Forrester during our last webinar, the majority of attendees (61%) expect a hybrid model; three days in one traditional office spacetwo days from home office).

Ask yourself: If you click on a hybrid team, how can you video meetings be better? Should leaders think differently about their approach to meetings, especially when homework will continue to be a part of your regular work life? What new technology will shake things up and set a new tone? Hybrid workplaces?

In this article, we promise to avoid references to “the new normal.” We think we’ve all had enough eye rolls in recent years to last a lifetime. Instead, we provide you high quality Insights to make the most of your meetings in 2022 and beyond.

Keep your meetings short, sweet and small

Whether you are on one remote team or work in one hybrid modelit’s safe to assume you spend hours of your day sitting down video conferencing. Even if you are in one again traditional office space, video conferencing is probably a part of your daily routine. video and audio Setbacks are as common as fire drills.

As I’m sure you know, it’s far too easy for a Slack conversation to escalate to a 30-minute contact basis. Flexible working Models can be a double-edged sword in this regard; some employees feel as if they are always online when not working in a physical space office space due to the fluidity of to work from home.

Therefore zoom fatigue is now an integral part of our colloquial language. In fact, a Study 2021 shows that 32 million remote workers report fatigue and burnout from online meetings. This can have a direct impact team culture and can leave employees feeling isolated and stuck in the inertia of it all.

Each meeting should be set on purpose. Have you ever found yourself in a recurring meeting and found you don’t even remember what the point of it was? Resist the knee-jerk reaction to staying in touch and trust your team can collaborate asynchronously when needed.

It’s also important to consider how many people are being asked to attend a particular meeting. A good rule of thumb is Amazon’s “Two Pizza Rule”; If you order two pizzas, would that be enough to feed everyone present? If not, don’t add another pizza – revisit who you invited and consider if everyone needs to be present or if they can fill in details about their specific role afterwards.

The most productive meetings typically involve four to six people and are short enough to allow employees feel as they said their share without getting too caught up in the weeds of big picture initiatives.

Deploy Your hybrid team

Without that face to face contact to which we are accustomed, remote jobs can do employees feel as if their home offices are islands.

On the other hand, it’s just as frustrating to spend half the day in meetings that could have been emails. Which leads to an urgent question: How can remote teams find a healthy balance between working independently and consistent communication?

Teams who are not used to it Hybrid workspaces used to being more robust video conferencing Office solutions for disparate remote workers. But now most people are limited to a tablet, laptop or other messaging app on a smart phone.

Honestly, Google Meet just doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s harder to connect with people when body language is confined to tiny squares on a screen, especially with the more introverted members of your team.

This leads to the need to divide your gatherings into the four different types of meetings:

The four different types of meetings

1. Presentation (informative) – Think of this as a show and tell where you have something to share with the rest of the class. All who need to hear are involved.

2. Brainstorming (thinking through) – Maybe you’re trying to piece together some half-finished ideas and identify obstacles or the best step forward.

3. Connect (relational) – The human connection is paramount hybrid teams. Nothing can take its place face to face Relationships, but taking the time to connect with your team in a more social, relaxed context builds trust and fosters healthy togetherness team culture.

4. Thu (task-oriented) – This timeframe should be used for project planning with very date-driven timelines for key stakeholders. What to do when? And by whom?

With these meeting structures, keep in mind how you plan your meetings and what you’re trying to achieve to make sure you don’t contribute video conference Burn out.

Pro tip: Instead of scheduling a meeting to a specific time frame that people have to fit into their schedules, you can record your meeting so that it’s yours remote team can watch it in their own time. For meetings where you don’t expect a lot of conversation or questions, try recording instead of scheduling a meeting. Answer all questions, share important information, make decisions and brainstorm messaging apps like Slack.

This brings us to our next point:

Bring your meetings to the point

Most (if not all) meetings are based on some form of content. Considering the four types of meetings, three of them rely on content for collaboration. Whether it’s a PowerPoint presentation that needs review, assets that need to be brought to the attention of decision makers, or Storyboards that require approval from the director.

To have the most productive meetings, you need to make sure your content is at the forefront of the discussion and accessible to everyone involved — whether they’re in one physical office space or part of a remote team.

Solutions like Bluescape allow teams to iterate within customizable workspaces in real time video and audio meeting skills. This allows teams across departments to complete projects faster, so they can focus on the big picture instead of spending time trying to get everyone on the same page.

Start better meetings today

You should always keep an eye on the future. This applies to the future of how teams work together.

The hard truth is that meetings will (probably) continue to occupy a large part of your work life. The goal is to make them worthwhile even as they adapt to a Hybrid Workplace and the needs of remote teams. With these tips, we hope that not only will you make the most of the time you spend on it video conferencing but also the time you spend cultivating a productive team culture.