Three minutes before my online meeting starts, my internet decides to take a siesta. My baby wakes up and wails as if he has never had a drop of milk in his entire life. As I restart both my router and my computer, one-handed with the baby on my hip, my phone buzzes.
It is 10:00 and my boss wants to know if I am attending the meeting. I sit down and panic-type with my one hand over the desperate cries of my infant: “Interbet down. Z woke up. Trying to get in”. I hit send before I notice the spelling mistake.
When I finally manage to log in to the meeting by 10:07, everyone is irritated at me for being late. The next half hour is a scene from my nightmares. The internet keeps disconnecting and my line keeps dropping. I can’t hear anyone and they can’t hear me. My screen won’t share. And as I try to breastfeed my wriggling wailing baby with one hand and do my job with the other, I realise – this meeting should have been an email. My life would have been so much simpler if this meeting was an email.
As I am writing this, I am a project manager, working from home in the midst of a global pandemic in a third world country. I am mom to 11 week old baby Z and wife to G, a data scientist also working from home. We have LOTS of online meetings and I wanted to jot down a few musings I have about how they could be made bearable.
Do not host a meeting if an email will do
This has been obvious for as long a meetings and emails have coexisted, but if a bulleted list will be more efficient than having an hour-long meeting, do not have a meeting. Despite removing some barriers to work (long commutes, having to dress in business casual attire, keeping your face straight while speaking to an annoying co-worker), working from home has introduced additional challenges. As the lines between work and home life are blurred, many people spend more time doing work than they would have pre-pandemic. Just because someone can log into a meeting relatively easily doesn’t mean each piece of communication must happen in a meeting. Respect other’s (and your own) time, and carefully consider the appropriateness of the form of communication before initiating it. My husband sometimes has between nine and eleven meetings a day! He jumps from one call to the next without any time in between to get any other work done.
Be early, if at all possible
I host most of the meetings I attend. This means that I am likely the person who scheduled the meeting in the first place and that I will have to admit people to the meeting if they are logging in from a different institution. Logging in a bit early allows me to accept all the outside attendees so that we are all on time.
Arriving to my computer a few minutes early allows me the opportunity to open all the documents I might need during the meeting. I also have a chance to check that the lighting for my video is adequate and that I look presentable, should I need to use my video.
If I am attending the meeting, being a bit early allows me the opportunity to catch up on what the meeting is about so that I don’t seem completely out of touch when I am called on to speak.
In both hosting and attending meetings from home, being early allows me to check my internet connection and to tether from my phone should my home wifi decide to give up on me. In a few cases when my computer has let me down, I have had to log in to the meeting from my phone itself.
Have an agenda
When inviting people to attend a meeting, it is best to have an agenda for what the meeting will be about. This way, the meeting has some structure and participants know what to expect. It also allows the person planning the meeting to gauge if the time allocated is realistic. If at all possible, share the agenda for input a few days before the meeting. On the day, share the agenda on screen so that people can see where they are in the progress of the meeting. Should the presenter’s connection drop, someone else can pick up the meeting where the presenter left off.
Creating an agenda helps me decide if having a meeting is necessary. If I can type what I need to communicate in an email and there is no need for me to speak to someone, I keep to the text and don’t request a meeting.
Take meeting notes
Ideally someone should be taking meeting minutes, or at least notes. I find it works well if the minutes are taken on a copy of the agenda. If the minute-taker is brave, have them share their screen as they type the meeting notes. This allows people to see that all their input has been taken note of and to point out if something is incorrectly noted down or forgotten. The person taking minutes must note the attendees, the platform the meeting is taking place on, the date and time and all relevant actionable items with the person who noted them. I made a meeting agenda/minute template for the project that I manage that has been very helpful. Action-items (all the sentences in which verbs are used – “Max must send questionnaire” for example) are summarized and sent out in the email body text as a list with the meeting minutes attached. This way attendees have a quick reference to what must be done after the meeting.
Be a conscientious participant
The etiquette of online meetings differ depending on the person and/or group hosting the meeting. Some groups might religiously use the hand-raise feature in order to request to talk. Others might do much of their discussion in the chat-box while a central person presents.
When hosting a meeting for the first time with delegates from many different places, I find it is good practice to explicitly lay down the meeting etiquette that they are expected to follow. Particularly important (for me at least) is that participants mute their microphones if they are not speaking. I also like them to turn on their video (if they are able) when they speak.
When attending a meeting, I try to keep to the defined etiquette. Should there be no explicit etiquette listed, I observe how the participants interact with each other before attempting to interact myself. I suspect that this might be a reason many people find online meetings difficult, dull or unproductive – meeting etiquette has not been explicitly communicated and is not reliably enforced, so attendees are unsure about how they are allowed or expected to participate.
Remind participants that there are humans behind the screen
I like having my video on for at least the first and last few minutes of the meeting. If our respective internet connections allow, I prefer if everyone in the meeting has their video switched on. This does not replace an in-person conversation – the lag and limitations of video are too many – but it allows us to at least see faces instead of monogrammed black boxes. With video it is relatively easy to show that you are a human. I like showing baby Z if I have him with me. It gives people a glimpse into my world. I also enjoy seeing other people’s lives unfold in the screen behind them. It makes me feel less isolated. It is futile to pretend that our home-lives have no impact on our working lives when we are working from home. I find it best to embrace the situation with empathy and enthusiasm.
How have you embraced working from home? Are there any tips and tricks that you have found to be a saving grace?
