Zoom fatigue and ways to overcome it

Three years into remote work, zoom fatigue is still an under-addressed issue.

The initial transition from office work to remote work resulted in a sudden shift towards video conferencing tools such as Zoom for conducting meetings. This transition from in-person meetings to virtual ones resulted in unexpected outcomes.

The most commonly recognized outcome is known as "Zoom fatigue" (3): “tiredness, anxiety, or worry resulting from overusing these virtual platforms.”

Let’s explore the causes of Zoom fatigue as well as methods to alleviate its symptoms and related problems.

Video conferencing from home offices can be draining

It's common for work-from-home employees to lack a separate workspace, and instead share their living space with family members or partners. This situation can result in added stress, as the employee must either negotiate a schedule with their family members to avoid interruptions, or remain on high alert for potential interruptions from partners, children, parents, or pets. These interruptions or the need to remain vigilant can cause shifts in focus, and returning to the context of a video call requires additional cognitive effort, leading to increased fatigue and exhaustion. Moreover, if other team members notice the employee's distraction or heightened alertness, it can also distract them.

Video meetings tax the human visual processing system more than in-person interactions

Even with time, as employees become more accustomed to participating in video calls, (and perhaps with companies providing better pay for employees to afford a separate workspace) there are still certain inherent features of virtual meetings that make them more challenging compared to in-person interactions.?

Team video calls require individuals to constantly monitor multiple videos simultaneously and that sustained attention can deplete energy quickly (4).?

The human visual system has two modes of operation: peripheral and foveal. The peripheral vision is capable of attracting attention to an object, and it consumes less brain energy. Peripheral vision primarily evolved to detect motion and flicker, allowing individuals to identify potential dangers and turn their heads to focus and properly inspect the surrounding context (5).

During a typical in-person office meeting, peripheral vision scans the environment efficiently, allowing the brain to conserve energy and focus on the speaker. However, in a video call setting, peripheral vision continues to scan the physical environment while foveal vision operates in a vergence mode, attempting to focus on all participants in the call. Video calls demand constant attention and focus. This results in a significant increase in cognitive and brain energy expenditure. This constant vigilance is one of the factors contributing to zoom fatigue (6).

Inconsistent video and audio quality lead to additional challenges

Another noteworthy aspect is the impact of bad internet on the lagging effect of video calls. When the audio quality is poor, individuals have to exert more effort to hear and understand what is being said, leading to a significant increase in cognitive load and faster onset of fatigue (8, 9, 10).

Additionally, when the video signal becomes asynchronous with the audio signal, it leads to an additional cognitive load as the brain has to re-synchronize the visual and auditory information, which is proven to be quite exhausting and contributes significantly to the growing fatigue (11).

The video call setting can also increase fatigue due to the perception and production of non-verbal cues, even when the internet quality is assured to be high. Non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, gestures, and posture play a crucial role in human communication as they are often used subconsciously to build trustworthiness and facilitate productive collaboration — but video calls often make these much harder to interpret (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17). Instead of seeing real people in the room, we see multiple thumbnails on the screen, which requires greater effort to produce and perceive these cues, leading to increased fatigue.

After taking all factors into account, disabling video during calls may seem like a reasonable solution. However, this is not the case. As mentioned earlier, visual communication is crucial for effective collaboration, and seeing each other plays a vital role in collaboration (12). Furthermore, eye contact triggers emotional stimulation and its absence is harmful (18). Mutual eye contact also plays a significant role in establishing connections, adapting to one another, and reducing anxiety (19).

The employee's cognitive load is further increased by the constant presence of their own video reflection, similar to seeing oneself constantly in a mirror. This constant self-evaluation induced by seeing the video reflection can also contribute to fatigue by draining energy (20).

How to prevent Zoom fatigue

First, managers and employees must comprehend the fundamental factors of video-calls that result in considerably greater exhaustion compared to in-office meetings.

The study conducted by Microsoft (21) provides an excellent summary of the scientific consensus:

• Brain science suggests that remote work and video meetings tax our brain more than in-person work
• Excessive numbers of video calls may lead to employees feeling overloaded and resorting to multitasking, which leads to reduced attention and mental fatigue (22)
• Fatigue starts within 30-40 minutes of a video call
• To maintain productivity, total time spent in video calls should not exceed two hours per day (21)

Various studies also recommend ensuring employees incorporate regular breaks to rest their eyes and engage in at least 5 minutes of physical activity. Companies should also strive to provide high-bandwidth internet access for all remote employees and ensure that employees receive adequate compensation to afford a workspace with a separate room for work.?

Zoom fatigue is an inevitable challenge for remote workers. However, companies can help mitigate this by implementing policies that provide stipends for internet and home office setups, mandate breaks or establish a maximum number of meetings allowed in a day, and by creating work environments that encourage team collaboration and engagement.?

References:

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