What are people who WFH on teams calls meeting about?

[mjf981]

I've always had an obvious client facing (healthcare) role. I have appointments every 20-30 minutes and obviously need to be in the office to do this. All of my friends have similar jobs, or manual labour type jobs in factories, farms etc. We have maybe 1 meeting every few months, and its just 10 minutes of management giving us an update on how things are going.

I see people on here all the time saying they spent all day in teams meetings while WFH, and I have no idea what these meetings are. What are these meetings? Who are you meeting with? Is it other team members or mostly clients? How are you generating income for your employer? Enlighten me please. Its a world I know nothing about.

Today I had Teams meetings for...

• 1 on 1 with manager
• Project meeting with other internal stakeholders
• WIP meeting with external agency (Developer)

All meetings that would have occured wether WFH or not. They're now just more efficient over Teams.

HTH

A couple of examples for you. I'm a project manager. To get things done, I hold regular meetings with my teams, agree actions (which are minuted) and review progress on them and against plans.
When things go wrong, it's generally quickest to set up a meeting to agree an approach to take to resolve the problem.
I don't attend meetings that have no value for me, or where my inputs are not required.

I'm a corporate lawyer. Spend a lot of times in calls getting people to tell me what it is they've done or want to do. Then discussing what will work and what won't and what they'll have to to first before they can proceed. (this on repeat until it's done right :)

I work in a small office. When face to face we might sit round a table together for 20-15 mins just to agree a particular process, or I might just chat one to one with someone because I have a few questions about how to handle a particular project. This is all the same over teams meetings, just remotely.

I spent 18 months working on a big system implementation. Teams meetings to make design decisions, resolve issues, training, testing, data conversion and then support after live. Many many calls with both external consultants and internal stakeholders. Oh, and the project meetings to review progress, 1-2-1 with manager, colleague support, team meetings...

me - internal calls about client work, who is doing what research/presentation/sales deck etc, then actual presentations to clients, most of which are still virtual. (I work in consulting). I only spend an hour or so a day on this though.

DP - spends most of the day on calls with colleagues around the world making decisions/discussions about how a particular v big product they are all working on needs to be developed, what is the content/technical plan, on meetings with potential partners/content providers/organisations, or ones they already have deals with, legal conversations about said deals.... about 50% of which would have been face to face pre pandemic, but he isn't really travelling much yet and doesn't want to go back to the insanity of the pre-pandemic travel schedule anyway!

Today I have had

• 1:1 with one of my direct reports
• team meeting with the whole group
• meeting with an account manager about an Independent Assurance audit taking place soon
• meeting with a bid writer about a proposal they are drawing up

Later today I have

• workshop with a group who are updating their Business Impact Analysis for one of the offices and need some guidance
• I'm chairing the web accessibility board
• I'm chairing the Information Security Management System Steering group meeting

So a truly thrilling day

So far today...1:1 with one of my team, a divisional cascade chaired by our CIO and 2 supplier governance meetings. Another 5 minutes and I'll have time for a toilet break and some lunch.

Other meetings, various project meetings, planning meetings, governance meetings, decision committees. The list is endless but I work for a very meeting heavy organisation. Generally I'm in meetings from 8.30am to 5pm with a lunch break if I'm lucky. I live for cancelled and rescheduled meetings when I can actually take a break or (god forbid) get some actual work done.

Today I have had a status call with the whole team, and a call with a smaller group about some specific actions on a project. This afternoon I will have a call with around a dozen people from different companies about a project we are all working on together, a briefing call with some of my team and a call with a recruitment agency about two roles we have available.

Yesterday:

An EGM for a Special Resolution on the merging of two group companies into a holding company.

A meeting to discuss how we’re going to represent this in our group structure chart.

A meeting with my Maltese counterparts to confirm whether and to what extent we need to be transparent about private equity in our group structure chart.

A meeting to discuss refinements to the technical balances recommendations for the quarterly reserve review.

A meeting with one of our iNEDs to get his view on the above refinements, approval to circulate, and to ratify some indemnities on a loss portfolio.

A catch up with the colleagues I manage to make sure they’re in the loop about all of the above.

”Generating income” is a broad brush. Most companies have loads going on beneath the surface to facilitate it.

I am 40% WFH and rest in office.

Discussing our response and written submission to the latest government regulatory bollocks we are subject to so that I can write it and submit it to the regulator

Discussing and agreeing what capital investment we are going to bid for from our funder

Strategic business planning and setting budgets for next year

Team meetings, committee meetings, 121, executive briefings

Considering action and planning these actions/ evaluation to address poor performance in meeting KPIs

This morning I have had

weekly huddle - hate this!
Legal contract review
Sales qualification sign off

later this afternoon I have a meeting with a new starter about client and contract novation

The same meetings I would have had in the office in a meeting room or with people dialling in on the phone.

The meetings havent changed just the medium in which they are delievered. Everyone at home

I'm in a management position. My meetings are mostly with colleagues (to make sure projects are moving on) or to manage client relationships. TBH on one level those could be by email, especially as sometimes we don't have much to discuss, BUT the regular touching base means any ongoing issues can be monitored plus it contributes greatly to relationship-building, so that when the client's contract with our employer is approaching an end, they chose to stay with us.

Today I just have two big meetings to dial into, neither of which I need my camera on for - one is a business-unit update that I can listen to with half an ear while writing emails, the other is a new project forum where people present ideas and ask for feedback.

The rest of the time I'm sending emails, making sure our projects are going according to plan.

It was probably a similar question asked about "what do people do in the office all day?!?"

WFH is the same as the office without the banter.

Every meeting is now on Teams. Every time you need to chat something through, it is on Teams. It is literally a home office.

I'm an accountant so we have meetings to talk about how we are going to do stuff - we are working on the budget at the moment. Required output is X so I'll do this bit and my colleague will do that bit. Also reviewing work we have done to make sure it's right.

It doesn't make any difference if we do it in person with the spreadsheet up on a big screen or over a video call.

For me it's more the meetings content I guess? I get what OP is asking

I have a meeting maybe once a month which is feedback/1:1 and that's it
Policy/procedure updates come out by email, random questions on email or WhatsApp and we never have whole team meetings as we can't do them in office hours

I’m a trainer for a department in a big business.
my day is training new recruits via teams

Public sector with a dispersed team. Today I have had a call from a colleague to discuss H&S, a two hour training session for something technical, and this afternoon is a team meeting where we'll be covering a request for support, team update and again H&S.

Yesterday I had a teams meeting with consultants who are doing work for me to go over the design. We needed an hour with four people and it was very efficient if I do say so myself!

It sounds hideously tedious to be stuck in meetings all day, virtually from a laptop. I can't think of much worse when it comes to a career, actually.

Weekly workload meetings where we look at upcoming projects and work out who's going to do what.

30 minute team meetings twice a week, where we see if anyone's having problems with workload/projects/whatever and then have a social chat. It's basically a replacement for the chats you'd have over your desk in the office.

We have a meeting when a project starts so we can allocate all the tasks. Then weekly progress meetings to talk through problems and make sure we're on track.

Ad-hoc calls to ask questions that are too involved for Teams messages. Or where we need to share screens to look at the same document together.

I work for a university in a professional advisor role. Like @Luciey I have loads of meetings that were previously in person but are now more efficient on Teams. If we’re working on site people have to travel to different campuses and buildings for meetings and it’s a massive time waster. Teams is better for senior management because they have very full diaries, and the travel is even more of an issue.
The meetings can be project discussions, team catch ups, formal committees, working groups, delivery of training, discussions of current issues / problems / topics, webinars, or one to one advice sessions.

Basically a lot of my job is talking to people, working out solutions (often as a team) and writing stuff, and a lot of the talking to people and working out solutions can be done just as well or better on Teams.

I'm a university academic and I use Teams for :
Teaching
Student tutorials
Team meetings
Meeting with my manager
University /Faculty wide meetings
Interviewing potential students
Meeting with my professional body

Essentially everything we used to do in the office but is now mainly on Teams ( for me anyway as I teach mainly online)

I’m a PR/comms account manager and copywriter, so meetings might entail:

Internal meeting with all staff on a particular project to identify roadblocks, capacity issues, ensure we all know what’s going on where (replacement for a quick office chat)
Kick-off meeting with client to discuss a project
Interviewing client for material to write about
Internal briefing from a colleague telling me about what to write about
Internal briefing but me telling a designer or digital bod what to do
1-2-1s with my line manager or with my underlings
Company-wide presentations
Remote training - delivery or attending

Basically shit loads of talking that could 99% of the time be an email

I am a project manager and spend roughly half the day on teams meetings.

Today I have spoken to 9 colleagues - some for updates on pieces of work they are doing, two instances where I was handing over billable work, one a team meeting.

I also have 121's with my boss, client meetings, governance meetings, internal resourcing meetings.

To be honest I find picking up the phone (calling on teams) much more efficient than email tennis. Sometimes it is just quicker and easier to call and have a meeting (essentially it is the same as a phone call but allows more than one person on the call) rather than mess around emailing.