Love them or hate them, virtual meetings are here to stay
Are you engaged to this new business norm of attending virtual meetings? Whether you are or not, virtual activities such as online meetings play a vital role in maintaining and growing today's businesses. You might be interested in this article, "Love them or hate them, virtual meetings are here to stay" and I would love to hear what you think.
"Videoconferencing platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom (now so ubiquitous it has become a verb), made remote work possible as covid-19 spread and countries locked down. Staff once needed permission to work from home; they now need it to go to the office. All kinds of work that once took place in person—from yoga classes to medical appointments—have moved online. The daily number of participants in Zoom meetings jumped from around 10m at most at the end of December 2019 to more than 300m four months later.
The shift has been good for the planet. Videoconferencing uses less than a tenth the energy required for in-person meetings once travel and equipment are accounted for. The benefits for people, in terms of their mental health and relationships with colleagues, are less clear. Some have come to enjoy interacting through screens. Others are exhausted by their colleagues’ inability to master the mute button. However people feel, virtual work is here to stay, says Tsedal Neeley of Harvard Business School. The trick, she argues, will be keeping the good parts and finding workarounds for the bad.
A year into the pandemic, many are suffering from Zoom fatigue. New research from Stanford University has laid out the science behind it. The first problem with video calls is that they force people to stare at their colleagues in close-up. Talk to someone on a laptop using the default configuration on Zoom and their face appears as big as it would be if the two of you were standing 50cm apart. At such proximity the brain is hard-wired to expect either a punch or a kiss. Endless eye contact makes the experience more stressful still. People rarely lock eyes for long during meetings in person. On video calls participants peer into their screens constantly and then wonder why they feel as though everyone is staring at them. Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and the study’s lead author, compares the experience to cramming co-workers into a lift and forbidding them to avert their gazes."
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