Conference calls and meetings

[guiltynetter]

I see LOADS of posts on here from people who are working from home and are in 'constant, back to back, video conference calls and meetings'. these people are often disturbed by their children, delivery drivers, etc or have funny stories to tell about how they're wearing their pyjama pants on their bottom halves

what kind of job requires you to have meetings all day long? and what do they talk about?!

(lighthearted)

We are having lots of meetings that are really short and would normally just be information exchanged as you saw someone in the office. So each project/ team I am involved in is having at least 2 such meetings every week.

I guess much could be done by email, but hearing human voices is good, and since we all know each other well, it's easy to imagine seeing them, and you can tell a lot about how someone is feeling from the call that you don't get from an email..the way my boss say ah can convey so much

Director in major company. Every ongoing project has associated meetings, also have 1-1 meetings with large team based around the world, managing budgets under new circumstances. Checking everyone is ok, reporting up to the board etc. Our industry impacted like everyone. Obvs having a quick break right now 😂. DH furloughed though so at least I am ok on childcare.

It puzzles me a bit ... I wfh anyway and have 2 regular meetings per week, one with a project team, the other a usually brief touching base with my manager. Never use video. Occasionally a colleague will contact me by Skype but usually it's much clearer to communicate by email - quite complicated technical stuff usually with attachments.

When I was in the office I'd have had about 3-5 internal meetings a week with colleagues, planning and discussing work - line manage 5 people so catch up with all of them at least once a month. I'd also have had about one face to face with a client which I'd travel to, and about 3 calls a week with clients updating them on how projects are going. Now all that everything has gone online I have about a further 5-10 meetings a day which are arranged at short notice and would normally have been casual conversations in the office. So it does feel like constant meetings. On the plus side, I've discovered that if you are on a long virtual meeting that you're not really needed at, it's quite easy to be getting on with something else at the same time!

I manage a team of 7, university role. Have a lot of f2f meetings anyway, as our work is very collaborative & project based.

At home, I'm on at least 3 video calls a day, catching up with the team, reviewing & planning their work, or working on something together.

Outside of that I'm working with other teams / units in the university & have regular meetings.

3 meetings per day, max 1 hour, seems to be the absolute max I can do - 3 kids here & when on a call it ends up being open season on general lunacy. I don't mind my own team seeing the kids, but cringe when it's a wider University meeting with people who don't know me personally.

Regarding video, I much prefer seeing people, it feels so odd just having the disembodied voice but of course people do often turn off the camera. One very stressful morning with the kids l was still in my pyjamas before my team meeting started so had to turn off camera, felt so unprofessional throughout even tho couldn't

... cut off the end of that ... should say 'couldn't be seen'.

Director in large company. I oversee 4 major projects and have weekly project meetings with those teams (4 x 1 hour). The Board of Directors has a weekly meeting which is mainly about COVID fallout (1 x 2.5 hours). I have 1:1s with all staff directly reporting to me to check on their welfare (13 x 30 mins), plus I have the same with my own Manager (1 x 30 min), plus a fortnightly 1 hr business focused meeting. I am involved in 10 larger networks which are related to the projects I run – each of these meets monthly for 3 hours at a time but it means there is roughly 2 of these per week. I consult most of my customers and stakeholders by videocall now and across our company, all colleagues are encouraged to make contact by videocall rather than email to give a more personal touch. I also run training courses (approx. 1 half-day per forthnight). All of this means that I work approx. 10 hours days (should be 7) with 5-7 hours per day in conference/video calls.

Even in normal times, I would spend a similar amount of hours in the boardroom or delivering training and then have to work unpaid overtime to do the prep and follow-up, plus day-to-day work. Right now, I still have all of this, plus additional videocalls with team members and colleagues which would normally just be passing queries in the office. It’s utterly draining but part of the culture in this sector. I am utterly bemused by friends who work at equivalently senior levels in other areas who are now starting me mention, after 6 weeks of remote working, that thy are going to use Zoom or Teams for the first time. I suspect they are equally bemused by the amount of time I claim to spend on these platforms during the working week – they clearly think I am exaggerating.

I suppose if you spend so much time doing video conferencing, you have to decide whether or not it's vital productive time or not and if not, scale it back.

For example Halloumi I'd really question whether you really need a half hour call with all your reports every week? That seems quite excessive. Maybe find another way of keeping an eye on what they are doing - they email you? Plus cut down the video chats to 5-10 mins - that seems like more than enough to 'check on their welfare'.

Plus are all parts of the '10 networks' 3 hour meetings really relevant to you?

@BarbaraofSeville I agree but as I said, it's part of the culture and especially when jobs are precarious, I'm not going to be the one stepping back and potentially missing out on vital information and/or looking as if I'm not interested. Believe it or not, the 10 networks are the absolute minimum for me. I used to be on 22 different committees but made an effort over the last 18 months to disentangle myself and give myself some sort of work/life balance.

The 30 minutes 1:1s have been mandated from above to emphasise that we value our employees (we do, until management level). I actually tried to cut these down to 15 minutes and one of my staff complained that she wasn't getting sufficient support...

We have a quick team check-in every morning. Then I meet once or twice a week with different project teams. Then some one to one catch-ups with various people. I'm also studying so back on zoom in the evenings 2 X a week. Then our extended family has a zoom catch up each weekend.