Whether you are in a boardroom or on a video call with staff, every meeting you host should be focused on motivating your team to help accomplish the company’s objectives.
To do this effectively, however, you need to create a meeting environment that is disciplined, yet collaborative and welcoming. The failure to do this could lead to your virtual meetings becoming uninspired, unproductive events.
Fortunately, many people have gotten excited about partaking in effective team meetings put together through an online meeting platform. Without the smell of competing coffees and a cramped seating arrangement, staff members are anxious to stretch their legs and let their ideas breathe.
Now, it’s your job to keep that enthusiasm up and running.
Here are some tips on how to keep your staff engaged in all video conferences you invite them to:
Stay on Schedule
Have a defined start and end time for your team meeting. This will allow your team to coordinate their schedules accordingly and ensure they have enough time to complete other tasks. When a meeting starts late and/or runs exceptionally long, this can negatively impact staff productivity and morale. You want your staff to feel like their time is valued.
One way to stay on track is to create a meeting agenda template that’s followed to the letter. For instance, allot specific chunks of time to brainstorming sessions, presentations, assigning projects and answering questions.
Allow Others to be Heard
To keep staff interested in each team meeting held, encourage participation from everyone. Now, this may not be possible for every video call you conduct, but fostering a space in which people know they can contribute is important.
When someone relatively low on the company ladder feels comfortable sharing an idea, they will feel empowered and eager to assist the company.
Staff engagement should be welcomed at all times. After all, you never know when a fresh voice, with fresh insights, may come up with something that drastically improves your business.
Add Engaging Elements
Just so that every team meeting doesn’t feel the same, try to occasionally add some engaging, interactive elements. You can easily share YouTube content to your video chat, create a poll to gage staff opinion on a project, or give a multimedia-fueled presentation. All of these tools can help a virtual meeting stay lively and original.
If people do not like watching the same movie more than once, how could you expect your team to feel any different about sitting through the same meeting over and over again?
Clean Audio and Video
Just like an in-person team meeting, video conferences need to be presented well to retain the attention of staff.
This means finding yourself a spot with quality lighting and high-end Internet connectivity. While it is hard to remotely replicate the boardroom experience, you still want the staff to feel like you’re right there with them.
If your audio cuts out, or your video gets choppy, your meeting can be derailed rather quickly. Nobody wants that to happen.
Don’t Overbook
To keep employee relations at a high level, do not book unnecessary meetings. Yes, a team meeting is a great way to reconnect with everyone and update one another on the latest happenings. However, too many meetings can pose a serious distraction to those who have sizeable projects on the go, or give off a vibe of redundancy.
The goal here is to find a balance and understand what needs to be discussed in-person and what could just be said in an email.
Banty Business is the perfect solution for your team meeting needs. With plans starting at $39.95 CAD/month, we can help your office improve its internal communication practices.
Banty offers a number of attractive virtual meeting features, including:
Custom URL: The unique Banty URL you create (i.e., Banty.com/OurTeam) is the online meeting space in which every team meeting can be held.
Intuitive Scheduling: Banty’s calendar and notification system will make it easier for you to keep track of all your video conferences.
Active Speaker View: This tool makes it possible to direct the entire team’s attention to the meeting’s leader or featured presenter.
Quality Connectivity: In case members of your team have a poor Internet connection, you can slow the bitrate of your video feed. This will infinitely reduce any potential choppiness or lag.
Staff Engagement Tools: Your Banty meeting room comes equipped with screen share, a digital whiteboard, and a door lock feature that keeps your meeting moving without interruption.
Strong Security: We use end-to-end encryption technology to keep your meeting material and discussions private.
