... to think that online video meetings are rubbish?

[Jourdain11]

I'm sure this has been done to death, but I've been off work sick since lockdown so haven't experienced till now. I voluntarily "attended" a few online meetings this week, as I had things I needed to hand over to those who are covering me.

Is it just me, or is it a really crappy, unsatisfying, unproductive way to work? I swear it took about an hour to cover stuff we would have done in 10 minutes. Somebody's connection is always bad. It's hard to get a sense of reactions when you're discussing points where people aren't in agreement. And I swear that the phrase, "could you just repeat that, I think we lost you there for a minute?" was used about 20x per meeting.

And yet there are people who love it and think it should be the way to work going forward! I just don't get it. Am I missing something?

Just me then?

They are annoying when the technology is poor, but a lot of people's technology setup isn't right for home working - the pandemic has highlighted that.

What you're also describing though is typical of meetings everywhere, whether in person or online. The "could have covered this in an email or in ten minutes" kind of thing.

They are irritating, but they do get easier. I won’t ever prefer them to face-to-face meetings, but 3 months in, I’m finding them easier to manage.

I think the problem is people are missing people, so meetings can get bogged down in chatter. I had a 45-minute catch-up with my boss yesterday that was mostly just her telling me about her friend leaving her husband! It’s the sort of thing we’d have probably chatted about while getting a cup of tea in the office; but when we’re not in the office, it all suddenly gets concentrated into one long session.

I like them, but I have good wifi and a decent laptop, and our team are pretty used to working remotely/are all good with tech. It's no different to working in person for us - my team left Zoom on for an hour or so the other day just so we could chat like we would at our desk, without it being a specific 'meeting'. It was really nice, felt like being in the office.

To be fair, I think it might be the specific role / sector I work in - a lot of the issues we had to talk through just didn't seem to translate very well into an online meeting! I also miss waving my hands around and rolling my eyes for emphasis. I mean, I could still do it, but nobody really knew 😂

I don't like it. It allows meetings to be dominated by one person more easily as I find it harder to speak up/interrupt on video. If it's one where lots of people are muted most of the time, asking questions to the group doesn't work so well as people are less likely to hit the unmute button to say something than they are to pipe up in real life, so it feels like lots of questions are being posed into thin air.

Fortunately it's only a small part of my work or it would really get me down.

Yeah - "I'm just going to mute you all" is quite depressing! And yes - it is much harder to chip in with the relevant point at the relevant moment.

My civil service department is too cheap to pay for video conferencing and their crappy IT isn’t up to it!

I usually WFH if I'm not seeing clients, but everyone else having to do so means my meetings have increased, so I am averaging 3 a day right now. Most are productive, but:

I have a rule of 4 people max on each.
We don't allow 'mute all'
We screen share where possible, so when discussing contracts for example

I am fairly fed up of getting up and having to do hair & make-up every day too!