Remote Work and Meeting Culture

I am really glad about the paradigm shift the pandemic brought into my workplace with regards to remote work. Being able to stay at home 80% of my time is something I grew to be fond of and it helped a lot overcoming some personally challenging situations during the pandemic. I really enjoy the benefits and having the possibility to adjust my space to my needs which really helps to bring me more often into the flow which is beneficial for both me and my employer.

Sure there are distractions you will never have at the office. But it’s also easier to structure your work around your personal life and still deliver as it gives you greater flexibility. There’s also no denying that remote working fuels my self exploitation more than being on prem as it’s easier to just spin up the machine and start to work on stuff e.g. later in the evening but overall for me, personally, the benefits for both me and my employer outweigh the problems. With one notable exception that I absolutely dislike about remote working and that’s about meetings. Not neccessarily about the meetings themselves but how people in online meetings attend to them in a fashion that seems to be more and more common: inattentive to a point that said attendees almost are phased out of the meeting. I have witnessed more than one meeting in which everybody was leaving but one who apparently did not realize that the meeting concluded.

Signs of which are attendess which do not really attend the meeting but instead go on and work on different things, accept a phone call, read their e-mails or the newest messages in the chat. Obviously they feel like the meeting is a waste of their time but it’s definetely wasted time for others which are e.g. waiting for a response from someone who’s just not paying attention. And most likely it really is wasted time for both of them. This is not something that’s novel or unique to online meetings. You can observe it in presence meetings, too. People staring at the screen of their laptop or smartphone. Though I don’t think this to be as common in presence meetings and it’s easier to spot and therefor address misconduct. To make the matter even worse I often find the proposed ‘solutions’ to the problem irrating and not helpful at all. My personal anti favourites being

1. make meetings exclusively on-prem
2. active cameras are mandatory

as they try to solve the problems by supervision, shifting the root cause almost entirely to the attendees.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game

What I’d like to see is to tackle the problem from both sides. As an attendee

• negotiate with others to move points which need your attention or input up to the front so you can get back to work. Do this before the meeting.
• if this is impossible or unfeasable stay attentive and wait with patience for your slot
• if you really feel like your presence is not needed, kindly state why you don’t see you are a good fit for the meeting and decline the invitation
• every once in a while suck it up and participate actively and purposeful as it not only shows your general interested about the team’s concerns but also helps with bonding

As an organizer / chairperson

• try to structure meetings in a way that the total amount of time,that’s not of everyone’s interest, is as short as possible, in a consecutive block and preferably at the end of the meeting so people can easily hop off
• be mindful of whom you invite and if their attendance is needed
• moderate actively and be on the watch out if the meeting wanders offtopic to the detriment of the meeting. Sometimes it’s good and neccessary to provide time and place for going offtopic even if it means that the purpose of the meeting will be lost.

Both parties

• fend off others reaching out to you, either actively or by just ignoring them for the duration of the meeting
• if something needs your urgent attention apologize and kindly state that you have to leave and why (attendee) or cancel the meeting or rather delegate the chairing of the meeting to somebody else (chairperson)

Just my two cents as a ’normal’ guy in the workforce.