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.

I’m a lecturer. I have big group project meetings for ongoing clinical research projects. One on one meetings with various colleagues or my line manager. Meetings with students about various things (dissertation, personal issues, tutoring), plus giving actual lectures (though this is now mostly f2f). Training workshops.

I’m surprised that in a clinical role you don’t have more meetings! My clinical colleagues have a meeting first thing every morning, plus and one or two big ones every week, plus more if involved in research, and then we have a big monthly meeting for all our clinics the first week of the month.

I guess it would be tedious if you didn’t enjoy your job / the subject matter of the meetings didn’t really interest you and you only see your job as an income stream. Whereas I really enjoy what I do, I know a lot about it, and 98% of the people I meet with are great. Same as anything, really.

Update meetings
Planning meetings
Department meetings
Meetings about meetings

I’ve just been on a teams meeting because someone got caught having sex at work 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Vague in case they are on here!

So far today...
1:1 call with one of my team
Meeting with full team for scheduling/ planning work
Meeting with project team about a move to a new office
Meeting with project team about environmental strategy.

All before 1pm. This is why I never get any work done!

I’ve had two this morning:

121 with manager in China (How are things going, do you need anything, how is project x going)

Planning meeting with the communications head and a project lead about organising a recording of our chief exec talking about a new tool

This afternoon I’m:

Going to a webinar training about a new process

Having a meeting with the head of Argentina about holding some online “Town Halls” which are meetings for a few hundred where we talk through how we’re performing and share interesting news

I work in HR for a charity, mainly from home.
Meetings in the last couple of weeks include

• team meetings - planning for the week, keeping each other aware of projects


• 1-2-1 with manager for similar reasons


• meeting to plan recruitment processes and decide who to interview/hire


• meeting about creating some new content to support recruitment.


• A meeting to induct a new starter


• A meetings about some salary benchmarking we’re doing


• Meeting to plan some transition of responsibilities due to some restructuring in our team


• Meeting about a well-being survey we’re doing


• Meeting to discuss our team KPIs and if we should change them

I do feel like Im in a lot of meetings and try to make them shorter!

I work in an admin role in a University. This week we have had multiple exam boards taking place via Teams where we all meet to agree student marks and degree awards, a 2 hour team meeting this morning to review how a programme went in 2021/2 and suggesting improvements for next year, and meetings with students regarding suspected cases of plagiarism.

My role is mainly take minutes at these meetings - yes, i know they can be recorded and I do use that function to assist when typing up the minutes but I still have to be there, partly to answer any queries that may arise.

I'm a technical writer. I have meetings with product managers and developers regularly to find out what needs to be documented.

It is a bit shit being sat in front of a screen all day but for my job, because geographically we are everywhere we can’t meet in person so it’s a means to an end

I can have

• team meeting to talk about what projects we are all doing that week, who needs help, who has some time
• weekly one to one touch point with my manager
• project meetings to talk about what we need to do and how
• catch up meetings to see if the peoject is ok to be delivered on time
• client meetings to deliver the project
• briefing meetings to see what the client wants - then meeting to talk through the proposal and then meeting to lay out the dates for the project

then there are also useless meetings - like numbers - reality vs targets; company news (i'd rather get an email) and in the start of lockdown we would have some social meetings to keep the team spirit but i hated those...

That's really not the spirit of the thread 😁
People aren't yaking on, they're answering the question!
Like OP, I have a very "obvious" job role so if people ask what I do, once I say my job title they have a fair idea of what my day to day work entails. My social circle comprises of teachers, nurses, hairdressers, carpenters, electricians etc. Jobs that people know! I'm fascinated when someone tells me that they work in let's say, marketing, because I have absolutely no idea how you would go about doing that job! And even reading the above people talk about their meetings, it's like another language to me! Much of it just doesn't feature in my life.

I work with people all around the UK and in different countries in IT. Even before the pandemic I used Teams and similar software to communicate with them.

With people in the UK it saves money and travel time. With people worldwide projects wouldn't be feasible.

Meetings are about what stakeholders want, working out whether what stakeholders want is feasible, project planning/estimation, progress updates on projects, working out solutions and explaining concepts to different people.

Today's meetings were about working out how to meet what the stakeholders want and project planning/estimation.

Some days are lots of meetings while others are one of 15 minutes where everyone gives progress updates. Lots of meetings are ad-hoc.

I'm on Teams / Zoom calls all day.

We don't income generate. We make sure the systems and processes are in place and operating to comply with current, and future, policies and regulations. Back office stuff I guess that customer facing staff have no idea occurs. There is far, far too much of it!

We have weekly planning, daily planning (as guessed, planning what we're doing that day/week)
ideas round table
Manager 1:1
Policy updates

I'm rarely in meetings though

I'm in a new role, so still building up meetings while mostly wfh.

Last job moved to total wfh with COVID and barely anyone was coming into the office still by the time I left

Our teams meetings were:

• Whole organisation updates
• What everyone in the team was working on so we didn't duplicate work
• Meeting external or internal people who night write articles for my publication
• Touching base with other teams whose work might be relevant to the publication
• Catch ups with manager
• Catch ups with department head

And so on, really

I find this an odd question... as a PP said, its the same as being in the office. You'd have regularly wandered over to someone's desk to ask them about {X} but now you do it on Teams from home. Outside of obvious customer facing roles where service users book appointments with you e.g. healthcare, we still all have meetings to attend. It's how we get projects moving, innovate together and approve/sign-off matters.

I have several Teams meetings each day (commercial lawyer in global company) about:

• 1:1 with manager/ my own reports


• whole team meetings (every few weeks)


• discussing legal cases with the relevant department in the business


• meetings with the other side in a negotiation to negotiate terms and re-draft provisions 'live'


• business review meetings - discussing priorities for the quarter


• management meetings - discussing team organisational issues etc.


• meetings with external counsel to discuss ongoing legal issues


• company update meetings


• attending training sessions

So many others. In a huge number of roles, you need to collaborate to get stuff done. So not all meetings are just 'dead' time where you're not actively contributing to making the company money. If I didn't have most of these meetings I wouldn't be able to get my job done and that really would cost!

I'm back in the office this week I have/had Teams calls about

• Monday morning team meeting to see what everyone has one this week/allocate -tasks
• Team meeting with my assessor for a work related course I am doing
• Teams with Client about upcoming launch
• Monthly Company meeting
• Teams call with a colleague who is WFH so that we can screen share

if more than 2 of us need to chat about a project and someone is WFH we would also do a teams call.

Before Covid we would go to see clients or they would come to us (often involving an overnight stay!) so everyone hgas found it a better use of time (plus cheaper for the company) to do a teams meeting instead of face to face.

This is what meetings are for.

I love these threads as they are a window into other people's lives. I too have a relatively meeting-free job, @mjf981 , so it's interesting to read what everyone else does.
Thank you for posing the question, qnd thank you to everyone who's replied!

All the above plus some teams are abroad anyway, for which it really doesn't matter where I am (hence I already W'd FH prior to Covid. The rest of my role can be done 'alone' and most of it is better without 4 hours spent commuting in total, plus I can focus here in peace and quiet.

To be honest, I find you can tell a slacker from a worker and they will find a way to slack whether in the office or at home. People with a strong work ethic don't need supervising and that doesn't change just because I can't see them. I probably work harder at home because I'm worried people will think I'm not, which is crazy but that's just me.

I work for a huge global company and most of I do requires me to speak with other people and teams constantly because all our projects involve multiple internal departments and we all have to agree what we're going to do and be coordinated since we rely on each others' knowledge, expertise, resources, etc. In practice this involves standing weekly/monthly meetings, plus ad hoc meetings on random things. This is all on the theory that people communicate and work more efficiently when they can speak to one another in a meeting/on zoom rather than just exchange endless emails. TBH I'm not sure that's always the case but it's always been the way in my world..

I'm a clerk for a Judge. First thing this morning was a tmeeting to discuss the day's list and talking over bundles for those hearings.
After that we went straight into the first hearing - I didn't take part but was dialled in to take notes so Judge can look at them later if needed.

Quick meeting with Jidge before lunch to discuss the orders being made.
Only 1 short hearing this afternoon, so will dial in on that and then a final meeting with Judge before I type up everything that happened today

Our hearings are not on Teams, but CVP which is very similar.

I find it interesting too, I am fully office-based (back-office function, not too dissimilar to @Chewbecca and only have one "proper" meeting a week but if we were WFH (no one does here) all our quick 5 min chats and discussions would be on teams so there would be several a day. I have always worked in this sort of role or R&D and so have no experience of sales, marketing, finance, HR, legal etc and find it interesting hearing what other people do.

I have

• weekly catch ups with my boss to discuss projects and their progress
• monthly meetings for two working groups I'm in that update and improve documentation for everyone in the dept
• monthly team meetings to discuss supplier issues and new processes
• weekly informal chats with the rest of the team.

In the past I've also had monthly meetings for other working groups I've been involved with.

And I have also had a couple of Teams meetings with HR to discuss my maternity leave.

I know it's hard to understand other people's jobs sometimes but your post whiffs a bit of 'no-one's job is real or important but mine'