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 miss self-employment and am just saving up to afford to do it again (nursery bills), primarily because the meetings drain me dry. At my work we genuinely have a “virtual stand-up” where even though we’re WFH and could easily sit at our laptops we have to go camera on and stand up, enjoying our colleagues paunches and underchins, while we bang on about pointless work shite. It really is soul destroying .

I generally WFH a couple of days a week but if I have Teams calls on these days it could be for a mix of Board meetings, internal stakeholder meetings or 1:1s with team members or other colleagues/trustees.

I'm so happy I have my corporate job. I get paid six figures to WFH 4 days a week and pick my dc up from school, water my garden before I start work and go out for lunch with DH. Obviously I work in the daytime and some evenings. Just got back from a 3 week holiday in disney world florida.

The rat race isn't what it used to be.

Payroll manager here - mine are usually morning team meetings to ensure everyone knows what their tasks are for the day and check if anyone needs support.

Then I have about 5 ongoing change projects so I will be calling with project managers about progress and issues.

Then site managers, training calls for new site leads around what they need to do with payroll.

Lastly some calls with providers involved with the projects resolving issues.

Not everyone hates their job, I am on calls a lot on Google meet but I enjoy it

I've worked from home for years and live my job. My meetings today

Project update with the customer
Internal catch up before a customer service review
A customer meeting to discuss a new service roll out
An internal technical call about a customer issue
Project update call with another customer x2

I've never been in meetings all day but some examples of weekly meetings include:

• catch ups with my boss
• catch ups/1-to-1s with my direct reports
• planning meetings about specific upcoming projects
• whole-team catch ups/planning meetings
• business updates from the boss to all or some of the teams

Sometimes they can be more spontaneous and I suppose replace walking up to someone's desk in the office, or having a phone call. Particularly useful if you need to show someone something as you can share your screen. Also good for confidential information so there's no email trail if someone can deliver the update live on a video call.

I love my job, no day is the same, I get paid good money, enough for me to have bought my house and raise my kids (single parent), I've also put enough into a pension I get to retire early.

So far I've logged in at 8, done several loads of washing, walked the dogs and had lunch in the garden in the sunshine

I work for the NHS. Sometimes I'll have a call with my manager to discuss my workload for the week, and what to prioritise etc. Other times is ad-hoc calls with other managers becasue either they or I have a query. Then we have monthly calls with the top boss who disseminates things from national meetings etc. We have cut down on the number of meetings because they were pretty pointless to have every week, as much of it can now be cascaded through an e-newsletter or e-mail

I work for the public sector so we don't generate income as such. Most of my work revolves around what funding we have to provide what service, and that involves contracts, budgets, data gathering, and working with other teams to deliver stuff. Also, Covid threw a massive long-term spanner in the works so there's work based around that. My week usually involves one meeting heavy day, one less meeting heavy day and one day where I get on with my work.

It sounds tedious (I have lost count of how many people glaze over when I say what I do) but I work with lovely people and the meetings are quite sociable and usually needed. Prior to WFH there was a lot of desk based conversation as well as meetings so I guess it is the equivalent. I 100% prefer WFH because it is so much more flexible. But I accept that not everyone can imagine liking this or understand.

How are you generating income for your employer? Enlighten me please. Its a world I know nothing about

Really? You can't conceive of working with someone who isn't sat directly in front of you? Of holding conversations, workshops and discussions with them?

How odd.

I'm a project manager, I'm on calls all day everyday. Progress meetings, meetings with clients, meetings with vendors, internal meetings to get people to do stuff, meetings with my staff, meetings meetings meetings...

How are you generating income for your employer?

You aware that while people can spend lots of time in meetings that not all their work is meetings?

For example lots of online forums and websites are developed by people working remotely.

I've worked in a national team for the last 10 years in a project based role. Meetings happen to make stuff happen, teams just means I get face to face contact with people I previously either had to drive 4 hours or more to spend time with or sorted everything out over the phone/email.

Last year my team saved the company over £2 million. We don't generate income, we save expenditure.

I work in Supply Chain, for a long while now my job has involved being in calls with factories and suppliers based all round Europe.

Nowadays it just means I can do them from my garden, or with This Morning on in the background.

Another academic here. No meetings today, but they are usually spent teaching, with line manager/other colleagues in department or other institutions, or students discussing all manner of things. I deliver or sometimes attend training online as well. The flexibility suits me down to a tee for many reasons. I may even generate a bit of 'income' as I have some time to write a research grant proposal today (if only I wasn't on mumsnet...) 😄

1:1s
Team meetings
Committees
Working groups
Task and finish groups
Regular project meetings
Steering groups
Daily updates x3

Then one offs related to other things that would normally just be a drop into each other's offices.

I haven't read everyone's answers but it's just normal work that used to be done face to face now on a teams call. I was offered a zoom-type call with my doctor the other day so it can happen in healthcare too (and in fact, the bulk of my interaction with doctors has been over the phone over the last couple of years, which is fine by me - she doesn't need to see me in person to agree that I need to get updated blood tests and, as it turned out, neither was it necessary to work out I needed a better treatment plan for my sinusitis).

Obviously, a midwife, for example, would absolutely need to do it in person. But lots of meetings, 1-2-1 or in groups can easily move online.

I am a lawyer.

This week I have been in a hearing (which is listed for 5 days) so that is all day with brief breaks and a lunch date. We also have a teams meeting in the morning and once the hearing has concluded for the day to discuss what has happened and strategy moving forward.

On a normal week I have meetings to discuss cases with colleagues, agree strategy and next steps. Teams meetings with clients to discuss their case. Teams meetings with the other side to discuss the case/settlement discussions etc

I'm a manager in the public sector.
Today I had:
A meeting with another manager and a colleague to prepare for a (face to face) meeting next week with an external stakeholder.
A catch up call with my whole department which was partly training and partly reflective practice.
The rest of the time I was typing up a partnership agreement and checking numbers on a spreadsheet to make sure they were right for a deadline tomorrow.
I only work 1/2 day on a Wednesday and I'm in the office every Monday.
I enjoy my job and the hybrid working works for me.

'Stakeholders'

God, I hate that word.

I manage teams who run clinical trials so I'll have teams calls with my different teams to find out the updates and guide them how to progress. I also have meetings with my clinicians to discuss current and new trials, sort budgets, discuss data, direction etc based on data collected by others

I can’t believe how happy this thread has made me! I’m so glad that I quit the corporate rat race to become self employed. Listening to people yak on about tedious job related shit is soul destroying.

I bloody love my job!!! I don't think it's tedious at all

Same meetings and calls I would always have had - some internal, these are on Teams regardless of in the office or at home as we are spread across various offices but most Teams are with clients, clients pay for my time on the call discussing and working through their matters same as if on telephone or face to face meeting. Generally some have replaced telephone calls as easy enough to do video instead

I work for a charity so it’s things like

• planning events with colleagues


• reviewing events


• planning publicity


• discussing child protection situations


• discussing volunteers and management of volunteers e.g X needs some support as going through a hard time, who is going to follow up with them?


• discussing with colleagues what we are going to offer next year


• Collaborating with statutory services and other charities


• training team members e.g how to do a particular task


• line management of three other staff members


• my own line management