Virtual meetings are the lifeblood of many modern enterprises. Despite their newfound importance in the digital era, many professionals are unfamiliar with the virtual meetings best practices that have been refined over years of remote work. Learning how to improve virtual meetings should thus be a priority for today’s aspiring professionals.
A virtual meeting is only successful when everyone walks away happy that they attended. Here’s a breakdown of virtual meetings’ best practices that will boost engagement across the team, avoid costly communication failures, and leave all attendants satisfied.
Virtual Meeting Best Practices to Follow
Ensure Meetings Are Properly Scheduled
Properly scheduling meetings when they’re truly called for is of paramount importance. So is avoiding unnecessary meetings that waste time, diminish employee engagement, and frustrate all those in attendance. Organizations struggling to bolster engagement in virtual meetings should understand that the first step is only holding meetings when necessary.
Once your employees are confident that this meeting is only being held because it’s of critical importance, it will be easier to learn how to improve virtual meetings. Until then, any reforms to your virtual meetings will often go unnoticed by attendants who are counting down the seconds until they can get back to their pressing work responsibilities.
Skilled leaders will also know how to improve virtual meetings by scheduling them at a time of day when all team members are wide awake. Many remote managers oversee diverse teams across multiple time zones; ensuring that meetings are scheduled at a time when all participants are awake, energized, and ready to participate will yield optimal outcomes.
Turn A Lecture Into An Interactive Experience
Many hardworking professionals will feel patronized if a virtual meeting turns into a droning, endless lecture. Most virtual meetings’ best practices note that interactive experiences are far more engaging and informative. Giving everyone a chance to present, or at least an opportunity to check in with the rest of the team, will bolster attentiveness across the board.
Interactivity doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone needs to be visible. As a matter of fact, researchers recently discovered that being visible on a webcam all day diminished overall participation in virtual meetings and exacerbated employee fatigue. Virtual meetings’ best practices will thus include plenty of speaking opportunities for all, that nevertheless doesn’t necessitate that the speakers in question show themselves via webcam the entire time.
Those learning how to run effective virtual meetings also inevitably learn that briefer meetings are usually better if you want higher engagement levels. Focusing on short, energy-intensive meetings instead of long, dull ones will encourage workers to pay keener attention and speak up with more meaning in the limited presentation time that they have.
Not all virtual meetings can be brief. Business leaders should also understand that it’s no crime to schedule breaks during long virtual meetings. Giving your employees an opportunity to take a breather, get up and stretch, or use the bathroom ensures that unmet human needs don’t end up frustrating business efforts. Your meeting attendants will also be grateful for the brief calm in the eye of the storm if they’re interacting with superiors.
Pick The Right Platform
Any list of virtual meetings’ best practices that doesn’t include picking the right platform is woefully incomplete. Some platforms have proven to be far more productive than others over the course of the pandemic; virtual meetings are effectively worthless without a platform that your team can easily navigate. With the right tools for the job, however, your virtual meetings can easily prove to be the backbone of your future growth.
Ask yourself if the platform in question has a history of buggy performance that might frustrate your business efforts if you rely upon it. Carefully review testimonials by other businesses to determine if a platform you’re considering has provided results for others in the past. Remember that popular mainstream options like Zoom may not always be the best choice for organizations that value creativity, engagement, and a positive virtual experience.
Get More From Your Meetings With Scoot
Scoot is the perfect medium for ensuring that your company is implementing virtual meetings’ best practices whenever possible. A virtual meeting platform designed for hybrid environments, Scoot allows employees to collaborate with ease to achieve their collective goals. Its key features like branded room design, in-room objects, and connected rooms help your team members build healthier relationships with one another.
Scoot features mingling features that let remote workers separate by vast distances connect to one another with ease. Great music built into the platform provides an energetic backdrop for creative work that often suffers in virtual meeting environments. Learning how to run effective virtual meetings that employees adore attending is far easier with Scoot.
Ready to adopt the virtual meetings best practices that will energize your digital gatherings? Learn more about Scoot and how it can supercharge your commercial relationships.
