To zoom or not to zoom: That is one question psychologists are asking
It’s not your imagination: you’re working longer hours and you have more meetings.
At least, that’s what early research is showing since the COVID-19 pandemic sent many people home to work remotely. And like the virus, virtual offices don’t seem to be going away any time soon.
Joseph Allen, Ph.D., a professor of industrial and organization psychology at the University of Utah and the director of the Center for Meeting Effectiveness, is studying the effects of working remotely.
Deborah DiazGranados, Ph.D., associate professor in the VCU School of Medicine and the Wright Center’s evaluation lead, had a few questions for Allen about how researchers at VCU can keep ‘meeting bloat’ from taking over their lives.
DiazGranados: It feels like, since we’ve been 100% or majority virtual, there are more meetings than when we weren’t. Why do you think that is?
Allen: Yes, there’s a new study out of National Bureau of Economic Research that was in the news recently and also a Harvard Business Review article which claim, based on data, that U.S. workers are working somewhere between 50 minutes and 3 hours more per day than we were pre-COVID-19. I’m also working with a client’s calendar data that shows an increase of more than 500 meetings each month in the last three months across their 150 employees. So, there is beginning to be evidence that we are meeting more and perhaps dramatically more.
There’s actually a rather simple answer as to why: we don’t have “bumped into Billie” conversations. Remember back when we were in the office all the time and if we needed something from someone, a quick decision, or the stapler, we’d just ask the person across the hall or in the cubicle next to us or our boss down the hall. Since we cannot do that now, we have to do all of that work in official meetings. We wouldn’t call bumping into someone at the water cooler a meeting, but we often get meeting-quality work done in those no longer possible bump-ins.
Additionally, virtual happy-hours and social gathering have started popping up that are technically meetings, because we don’t get social interaction with our colleagues otherwise, and as group researchers, we know that casual interaction is actually pretty important.
Is there a key finding from your research you could share related to making decisions on when to hold a meeting when teams are majority virtual or even partially virtual?
I’m not sure my advice here would apply to virtual or partially virtual meetings alone: When I talk to people and consult with organizations, I encourage them to ask themselves a few questions BEFORE pulling the trigger on a meeting (virtual or otherwise).
First, what is the clear, identifiable purpose of the meeting? If you can’t articulate a clear goal, purpose or aim that can and should be shared ahead of time, then you don’t need a meeting.
Second, can I accomplish this purpose without involving anyone or getting approval or collaboration? Sometimes we get into a meeting with a purpose, and then we realize that we didn’t actually need everyone there to move forward. We may just need an “ok” from our direct supervisor. Thus, if the answer is “yes, I can do this on my own”, no meeting.
Third, (after a yes to #1 and a no to #2), what is the minimum number of people I can bring together in order to accomplish this purpose AND are they currently available? For this last one, the decision to have a meeting is already a yes, but scheduling it might also stop if people are not available or other constraints arise.
Anyway, the point is, I think we default to scheduling meetings before we even know why, and it perpetuates meeting bloat on our calendars.
What are your top three tips for effective and efficient virtual meetings as we move into a hybrid teleworking scenario?
#1 – DO NOT use teleconference. If you can turn on the video, do it and don’t turn it off, if you can help it. I have data that I’m working on publishing showing that face-to-face and video conference meetings are essentially the same in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. However, teleconference (i.e. audio only) is a full standard deviation worse!
#2 – Establish a meeting leader to control participation and use strong facilitation. You’re not in a room together and subtle “it’s my turn” cues won’t cut it. If you want participation, which is associated with both efficiency and effectiveness, you have to be more proactive about it in the virtual context. Don’t let people be wallflowers, or they will quickly multitask, even with the camera on.
#3 – Deploy all those best practices you know you should be doing in your meetings back when we were meeting face-to-face. So far, my data is showing that MOST things from the literature previous to us all going online/remote continues to matter in our virtual meeting world. I published an article in 2018 on the topic, and we created a checklist of factors that promote good meetings (pdf) for it.
What advice do you have when meetings tend to be large, because it’s perceived that all should be at the table?
Stop it! Large meetings are extremely expensive meetings. You have the time, the participants’ salary, and the opportunity costs of what they could be doing. My general advice is not to include people under the premise of inclusion. Most, perhaps not quite all, would appreciate the time back to do their other work, but are either afraid to say it OR don’t have the authority to self-select out.
That being said, as meetings get larger, just as groups get larger, they get harder to manage. Participation diffuses, and the meeting is simply less efficient and effective. So, I go back to my three questions about whether to hold a meeting and right-sizing the meeting. Include everyone that is essential and not more. Then, take good minutes and send them along in an email or a memo to those who would probably have been invited as an FYI anyway. Most will appreciate it.
Do you have any evidence or thoughts to the “open office hours” where colleagues are on a zoom line for some set time in case people do have questions and want to pop into their “office”? Is this effective, what might be the drawbacks or the benefits?
Only anecdotal evidence and very mixed. These are mostly from instructors of courses and holding “virtual office hours” for their students. Some have found them to be extremely effective and well used, while others find them like office hours typically are in face-to-face contexts: quiet time to work, because no students show up. That being said, I think this is an empirical question that needs exploring.
As a researcher yourself, you’re aware of how complex and nuanced research administration and coordination can be. Do you have any specific advice for researchers trying to conduct and coordinate research virtually?
This is the toughest of your questions. So much of my work had to be put on pause, and then I transitioned to VERY quickly getting data on virtual meetings and so forth. From my experience and observations, the coordination requires even more deliberate effort on the part of the PIs and research team – that is, if they can even do the research, depending on the nature of the clinical trial that was originally proposed.
I’m the first person to recommend fewer meetings, but from a research perspective, to keep teams at multiple sites moving forward, you almost need more coordination meetings, status checks, and huddles. So, my recommendation from my research would be to have more, shorter, huddle-style meetings to keep things moving forward.
DO NOT allow the calendaring system to dictate meeting length. The purpose of the meeting should do that. So, make these meetings 15 minutes, and have some key questions to ask and discuss to quickly get the information and then get back to it. That’s my general thought and what’s been working for me.
Categories Clinical Research, Collaboration, Research, Staff