Five Strategies to Ensure Hybrid Meetings Are Equitable

In the new hybrid workplace, ensuring equitable participation in meetings can be challenging. On-site attendees have a natural advantage because they are sitting together in a conference room and have access to each other’s full, in-person presence, while remote workers are visible only from the shoulders up. That can put the remote participants at a disadvantage, creating a rift between the haves and have notes.

One client of mine ran an international team for five years. When everyone switched to remote work, she noticed members who had always worked from home started to speak up and contribute more. Having everyone on video was a great equalizer.

As people started sporadically returning to office, she wanted to avoid a reprise of the old days where on-site attendees dominated the conversation, with only token input from remote participants.?So she and I brainstormed ways to encourage equitable participation in hybrid sessions.

Here are the five strategies we developed to make sure hybrid meetings are equitable:

1. Embed breakouts into your agenda.?The larger the group, the harder it is for remote participants to chime in, so create structured breakouts as part of the agenda. This allows remote colleagues to also huddle and contribute like those in person might naturally do.
2. Alternate input. Explicitly switch between physically present and virtual participants when seeking input. The meeting leader can say, “We’ve heard from two of you in this room, how about a couple of people now who are virtual?” Anyone can take on the role of “alternator”—the person who tracks where the comments are coming from and switches the source regularly.
3. Create a buddy system.?Pair remote attendees with on-site buddies that they can text, message or Slack if they are struggling to get their voices heard. The on-site buddy can then leverage his or her physical presence and visibility in the room to help the remote participant get into the conversation. Over time, by changing partners for each meeting, people get better acquainted and able to advocate for each other’s needs.
4. Leverage online tools.?Encourage everyone, not just those working remotely, to use online tools such as chat to share their thoughts at specific times. Mixing in written documentation minimizes the disadvantage of those not able to speak in person.
5. Increase participation and reduce repetition.?Even with the four strategies above, you might still be missing opinions before closing out major topics. In those cases, ask everyone for a final round of input. To prevent repetition, request participants to say “plus one” if they agree with a point a colleague previously made, rather than repeating what that person said. If participants really have nothing new to say, they can also “pass” but need to say so verbally.

Adopting these strategies helps unite team members in discussions by ensuring that everyone’s contributions receive equal airtime, whether the participant is attending in person or over a computer screen.

This article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/5-strategies-to-ensure-hybrid-meetings-are-equitable-11635868139

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