Is It Better for Teams to Have Virtual or In-Person Meetings?

How — and whether — to get your work team together in person.

Asked if they preferred virtual or in-person meetings, executives in a?Forbes Insights survey?chose in-person meetings. Handily.?

They?cited?reasons such as the ability to?build strong, more meaningful business relationships?(85%),?read body language and facial expressions?(77%), and?engage in more social interaction and bond with co-workers or clients?(75%). About half of respondents (49%) said in-person meetings?allow for more complex strategic thinking.

These numbers concretize something that many of us intuit: that in-person collaboration leads to higher-quality work outcomes and employee experiences.?

This is why, as leaders of a small firm in an industry that depends on strong colleague-to-colleague and firm-to-client interactions, we feel uneasy with 100% virtual work. It’s hard to connect under these circumstances. We’re feeling the limits of our collective isolation.?

And yet, we have to operate in the world as it is. Today, that means embracing remote work.

Because so many of us work remotely, our firm has started hiring people without ever meeting them in person. Soon after, we assign each new hire to a remote team. They get to know their team members from afar, working together through Teams and Zoom meetings and communicating through email.?

As leaders who orchestrate teams, we’re keenly aware that teams are expected to work together in harmony from the get-go. But what if they’re not harmonious from day one? What if they could do their work in a way that’s more gratifying, simply by spending some time together?

All-virtual-all-the-time isn’t the perfect setup. If our employees knew their team members as humans — their typical order at a coffee shop or deli, the kinds of shoes they like to wear, the little stories about their families, friends, pets, or vacations?— we believe they would be more able to empathize and work well with one another and would have a deeper understanding of how they can work together as a team.?

“I think it dehumanizes us to some extent,” Shelley says of remote work. “We have project teams that have never convened. I think it would be better if they could, at least once in a while. I think that when you have hugged someone or shared a meal and a cup of coffee, it solidifies the relationship. It’s very difficult to do over the platforms we’re relegated to right now.”

The remote work world has its benefits, of course. Though most of our employees are located in and around the Olympia area, we do have some consultants who work farther afield. We’ve been able to tap the expertise of people across a wider geographic area.

Many of our teams, however, don’t have to interact exclusively online. Our advice to our own teams is to meet in person regularly — at least at some interval — if they can.

We believe people need time with work colleagues to be satisfied at work, to deliver their best, and to enjoy improved mental health.

What to know

What’s the best approach when you’re considering a virtual or in-person meeting? Here are three areas to consider.

Know the benefits of the in-person meeting

As Indeed?notes, “Face-to-face meetings are important because businesses are built on relationships.”

There are quite a few benefits, including?more effective communication,?a deeper approach to idea generation, the?ability to read non-verbal cues, and?developing trust.

There’s the obvious, too: When you meet in person, there are?no tech glitches?— at least not the kind that keep a team member from attending or fully participating.

Know when in-person is in order

Rae Ringel, in?an article for Harvard Business Review, notes that it’s more?when?than?whether?to meet in person.?

Ringel suggests paying close attention to the goals of a team interaction and choosing in-person meetings for the most important ones. As leaders, she says we should “examin[e] the precise nature of the tasks in front of us, our specific objectives, and the weight we attach to the ones that compete, like efficiency, effectiveness, camaraderie, and mental health.”

To figure it out, she recommends asking a series of questions before you drop another Zoom invitation. Ask yourself, for instance: “Should this be a meeting?,” “Are my meeting goals relationship-based or task-based?,” and “How complex are my objectives?”

She also notes that seeing it as an either-or — virtual meeting?or?in-person meeting — is a limiting framework. We can break out of this pattern by using other technological tools.?

For example, she notes that one executive, in lieu of a monthly all-staff meeting, sends out a pre-recorded video to all staff members who then watch it on their own time.

We find this inspiring. By replacing a fairly straightforward meeting with a flexible task, this executive is giving her teams the permission to get creative themselves. She’s also freeing up valuable time — time that teams can use to meet in-person, if they see fit, to discuss, strategize, and bond.?

Know what employees really want

According to?a 2021 poll?of almost 2,000 employees, most identified a raft of positive benefits to remote work. Among them, they cited?enough flexibility that they could consider moving to another city or country. (In fact, 62% of those who responded that they liked this option reported having already moved to a new city.)

Workers ages 25 and older said they didn’t want to work from home permanently. But younger workers, in the 18-24-year-old range, said they did. Workers across the board liked?the ability to travel while working,?flexible work hours, and?the absence of a commute.

Clearly, working remotely is a boon for employees. It’s up to us to make in-person time together — whether it’s for a performance review, a strategy meeting, or a social get-together — worth it.

What to do

So how do we, as leaders, do that??

We’ve found that it’s simplest — and most fun — to lean into social time to help colleagues connect. As leaders, we take on the planning ourselves to make sure it doesn’t become another item on the to-do list for our employees.?

If you don’t have time to plan outings yourself, come up with a way to facilitate these kinds of get-togethers. Try delegating the task to an employee who’s naturally inclined to do so. We call this the leader of the “fun committee.”

Create a line item in your budget for social events. Set aside time on the company calendar, to ensure that team meet-ups or all-staff parties actually take place. Social times together won’t happen without some forethought and determination.?

Of course, you can’t mandate such things. As we learned in the wake of the pandemic, fancy bids to bring people back to the office fell flat.?

Instead, we’ve found that creating time and space for employees to come together, without making it a requirement, is an effective way to encourage connection while still honoring employees’ desire and preference for working from home.