When I started a new role on June 2019, one of the perks was to be able to work from home.
Most of the development team worked from home and only required to come into the office once a week on any day they choose. So our everyday meetings were conducted via video conferencing tools such as ‘Zoom’.
Remote work is becoming more common in this industry, and attending meetings via video conferencing tools are a necessity for working remotely when working within a team.
So I thought I’d share a few video conferencing etiquettes I’ve learned and adopted in the past year.
💻 Close All Unnecessary Applications
One challenge with online video meetings is to stay focused. It could just be me, but not being in the same room as the speaker or other attendees which seems to reduce my attention span.
I found that when I had browser windows opened on my second monitor, I start getting distracted and often try multitasking by browsing while listening to the meeting. It’s a bad habit to have and so closing all browser windows will mitigate this.
🔇 Mute Yourself When Not Talking
Although you may not be talking, if you’re mic isn’t muted, then other noise may be picked up and can be distracting to other people in the meeting, especially the person who is speaking.
Also if somebody physically comes to speak to you and you need to respond respond, this interaction will not distract other attendees at the meeting.
✋ Raise Your Hands If You Wish To Speak
When in meetings, it would gracious to raise your hand or provide some indication that you have a question or can add to the discussion. You may end up speaking over other people otherwise. Although this only works if your webcam is on and the attendees can see you.
⌨ Sit Away From Your Keyboard/Mouse
Additional tip to avoid being distracted. Keeping your keyboard and mouse away will hopefully you focus your attention on the meeting.
📵 Keep Your Mobile Phone Away
Your phone can be a big distraction, if you receive a notification or end up browsing on your phone, it is not only rude but takes your attention away from the meeting.
☕ Request Breaks
We should hope that the meeting host be responsible for managing the time within the meeting as well. But sometimes, that’s not the case and if the meeting is going far too long without a break, it is not unreasonable to request 5-10 minutes to fetch a glass of water, a hot beverage or use the bathroom.
👋 ‘Checking-out’ Of The Meeting
This one is uncommon but I think is important, when you’re in a meeting and you feel you’re getting no value from it, I feel like you should be able to request to leave the meeting when the opportunity presents itself.
I remember in my team, we had a QA engineer who is a regular attendee at our development meetings, but often we end up in a technical discussion which is of no value to the QA engineer I think.
So during our retrospective, I had made the suggestion or request that we can ‘check-out’ of the meeting if we find that the meeting doesn’t require our attendance. While I didn’t specifically say, but I requested this primarily for my colleague (the QA engineer) although, I think it’s valuable to have the option to check-out for myself as well.
🟢 Turn on Webcam
When in a video call and having a conversation with someone or a group, being able to see them is generally more pleasant than not.
If you’re communicating with your webcam on, people can see your facial expressions, reactions, acknowledgments and even see whether you’re present in the call.
Note: sitting in a well-lit room will help with the picture quality.
🔴 Turn off Webcam if you need divert your attention.
If you need to leave your desk or physically talk to someone, turning off your webcam will reduce any distraction to the other attendees, having this a common practice among your team will communicate to them that you’re occupied with something else temporarily.
Summary 📝
Not being in the same room as other people changes how you interact and pay attention during the meeting. For example, not paying attention because you’re typing at your keyboard or looking at your phone is equally rude whether you’re physically at the meeting or not.
This is something I realized by not only being guilty for some of these bad habits, but also witnessing some colleagues doing it either when I’m the speaker or just another attendee. So these are a few tips I recommend when attending online meetings.