Is Your Company Going Remote During Covid-19? Apply These Simple Practices to be Effective With Online Meetings!

My daughter's college is closing its campus for the rest of the semester and moving all classes online. She is about to journey into unchartered territory - Online Learning. Online learning has some interesting challenges ... challenges we may face in our businesses if we have never allowed for a remote workforce.

• We will need to adapt as teachers, leaders, and facilitators as some studies have found that we have brief attention declines first occurring after 10-18 minutes of online engagement.
• Research has also shown that many learners stop watching or paying attention to online lectures after a short period of time: In one example, students tuned out around the 6-minute mark.

Knowing these challenges exist in online learning, how can we translate what we know from online learners and run successful meetings for our remote workforce. 

1. When setting a meeting, ask yourself, does this warrant a meeting or can this challenge be solved in a group email.  Many times, just asking for help and/or feedback is all that is needed. If you do need a meeting, make sure it will be laser-focused by providing an agenda. An agenda will greatly improve your chances for a successful meeting keeping everyone on point.
2. Do not "over invite" to your meeting. Just key stakeholders related to your issue and/or business challenge. Too many people will certainly muddy the waters and potentially derail your meeting. Which leads me to #3...
3. Set some simple ground rules. If you have never participated in an online meeting before, you will run into people talking over one another, many distractions such as pets or children, and side conversations bleeding into your meeting. Ask that everyone be respectful of those speaking...Don't be "that person" and get eye-rolled from everyone...Let your peers finish their thoughts before you speak (or if your collaboration platform has a raise-hand feature, use it). Find a place that will allow for privacy without background noise and most importantly, create a shared document where ideas and/or other important points can be placed for future discussion. Do not let other topics distract from your agenda.
4. Make the online meeting interactive. Add online voting/polls, for example, to keep everyone engaged.
5. Keep meetings short, if you can. I suggest 30 minutes or less. Everyone's time is important. You want engagement! If your meeting drones on, people will have side windows open drawing their attention away. Again, if you are organized and have an agenda, you should be able to conclude the meeting with successful outcomes in the time you allotted.
6. Send a follow up "thank you" and remind those who participated the main points of the meeting and the action items. This both increases the effectiveness of the meeting and reinforces the importance of remote meetings.

This simple plan is one of many you can use to run an effective online meeting. I hope these points allow you and your business to continue being effective in the event your company needs to be remote. I wish you all success!

Cheers,

Barry

Barry Silver leads the technology group for Pet Food Experts located in Pawtucket RI. Pet Food Experts established its reputation as a trusted partner for independent pet retailers, the company was founded by independent pet retailers! The Baker family’s love of the pet industry began in 1936 when Michael Baker's great-grandfather opened a pet store in the basement of his home, specializing in selling live fish. Over the next 80 years, the business evolved into a chain of independently owned pet stores, and grew into a distributor of pet products from coast to coast

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