In March of 2020, around 70% of the full-time workforce officially became at-home workers. That chunk of the population took up video conferencing — Zooming, using Microsoft Office, meeting on Google Hangouts, or what have you — so much that Microsoft Teams saw a 500% uptick in usage in just the first two months of the pandemic. In short: A lot of people are at home, and a lot of them are using video conferencing tools to communicate with their co-workers. In theory, this could have worked well: People were operating as they did normally — only, they were at home. In practice, things were more hairy, particularly in the familial space. What do you do when you have...
How to Make Zoom Meetings Bearable — For Either Yourself or Your Employees
• POSTED BY Dawn B
Zoom meetings are here to stay, even if COVID-19 isn’t. The flexibility that at-home meetings afford is simply too valuable for employers or employees to lose — especially for those who are housebound, like the chronically ill. So, as Elle Woods said, don’t fight the fabric: change it! The best way to do Zoom is not to get rid of Zoom entirely; it’s to learn to live alongside Zoom meetings harmoniously. First: Employees Have to Be Able to Turn Off Their Cameras A 2021 study performed by the University of Arizona found that having cameras on during video meetings exacerbates Zoom fatigue, especially in women and new employees. Giving employees the option — or even a mandate — to turn...
Remote work is hard. Is your face well lit? Can your boss hear your kids? What if your partner walks by the camera? Whether you love working from home or can’t wait to go back to the office, video calls have become an integral part of today’s work culture, bringing challenges unfamiliar to the physical workplace. If the flurry of viral Zoom fails in 2020 taught us anything, it’s that digital workplaces have a long way to go towards replicating the intuitive ease of in-person meetings. You’ve gotten so used to comporting yourself in physical space that transitioning to a Very Online work style can be a technical and emotional minefield. Not only do you have to adjust to a...
