In these challenging times, we have adapted to doing more and more work outside of professional environments and in the comfort of our homes. While this may be favored by some for emails and desk work, making the daily stressful commute a thing of the past, some elements of work have only gotten more and more difficult in remote dynamics. Meetings are one of these features which can seem so much harder over devices compared to old-fashioned, face to face discussions. But this need not be the case. Read ahead for some helpful tips on how to make your transition into remote working as smooth and as easy as possible.
Set Clear Timings
Know when your meeting is going to start, and set a definite time for it to end. Set the call up a few minutes before to make sure there are no issues with connectivity, and encourage everyone to be punctual in connecting. Make it very clear that you have scheduled a fixed amount of time to discuss your ideas or issues, and do not let the meeting drag on. This will help keep your employees engaged and focused, and everyone is aware to contribute in a timely manner.
Keeping organized is hands down the best way to make meetings more effective in the long run, and if you struggle with this, a helpful digital assistant like one of these apps can really make a difference to your time management and organization skills. While you may yield an extra ten minutes or so if required, you want to set a precedent that your meetings are not more casual simply because you are working from home.
Record the Meetings
As we are dependent on technology to perform remote meetings, it is inevitable there will be various issues to prevent them running smoothly – and most of the time this is out of our hands. There’s not much to be done about poor connectivity in certain areas, faults in certain devices, and so on. While you can ask your employees to stay on top of these issues, sometimes they occur spontaneously and it is very likely (especially if you are transitioning into remote meetings) that people will be absent from the meeting. It is a good idea therefore to screen record the meeting and post it on a platform viewable by the workforce, or perhaps in a mass email. Not only does this make sure the content of the meeting is available to everyone, but it allows you to review the meeting itself and evaluate it yourself, looking for ways to improve the discussion.
Decide How You Want to Run the Meeting
It can be very awkward at first for participants, wondering whether they should turn on their microphone and camera, if they should respond to you vocally or with the chat function, and how a remote meeting should be conducted in general. You should decide prior to the meeting how you want to run it, and we suggest outlining your intended practice to employees before the meeting starts in an email.
Ask for Feedback
This is great to work through the transition into remote meetings, and is a sure-fire way to make them more and more effective with each meeting. Asking for feedback can be as formal or casual as you like – you can allocate five minutes at the end of your meeting to ask the participants for any comments, or you can provide a feedback form via email (anonymous or named)
Try out these strategies to improve the quality and ease of your remote meetings. These are simple tactics which are easy to employ and will make life so much easier both in a long and short timeframe.
Founder Dinis Guarda
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