Are you a manager? A boss? A supervisor? Do you manage a team of people professionally in any sense? If so, this article is for you. Sometimes physical meetings are inescapable. Particularly when they’re at your paygrade or above. But when you’re organising meetings within your team, it’s often very beneficial to organise them via video conferencing software as opposed to herding everyone into a physical meeting room. Below, we’ve listed a few reasons why this is the case. Read on to notch up your team’s efficiency.
Assuming everyone on your team works regularly from the office and working from home is rarely optional, a video call online still saves more time than a regular meeting. For a start, everyone on your team is probably already on their computers. Using the right video conferencing software, one click and you’re all already meeting. From working, to meeting, to working again. No getting up from your desks to the conference hall or meeting room, shuffling around the table to arrange yourselves, or even fumbling around with a projector. Because with the right screen sharing options, you can share your slides straight from your computer. When you’re done, Everyone will spend a lot less time sitting down again at their desks and refocusing too.
On the other hand, given the day and age we live in, it’s likely that there are days when some of your team can work from home. This means that physical meeting days may be days that you make them commute to work especially for the meeting. Opt for telecommuting instead and hold a virtual meeting via good video conferencing software. Now, while commuting doesn’t technically come into your company time in most countries, a long, exhausting commute might very well reduce their focus, both in the physical meeting and at their desks for the day.
Expect more of that effect if some of your team members work mostly from home as opposed to working from home a few days a week. For a start, they’re not even very well adjusted to the commute. After that, consider the fact that they’ve likely streamlined their work stations and all their other work processes at home. Readjusting to their work stations at the office would likely severely impact their productivity for the day. If it’s your call, make it a video call.
Meetings are boring affairs. That’s just the way of the world. No matter how charismatic you and your team are, or how warm and funny everyone’s interactions with each other are, even with catering and swag bags for everyone, professional meetings are boring affairs. A necessary evil. Obviously charisma, nice catering, swag and camaraderie make some meetings less boring than others but in the end...It is what it is. You probably already knew this but I thought I’d repeat it just to be safe, for any bosses out there who might have momentarily lost sight of that fact whilst promoting company spirit.
Virtual meetings at work can also be boring, but less so. For one, you’re seated right next to all the little adjustments you make to keep yourself engaged at work. That picture of your family, that funny sign on your cubicle wall, that stress ball you can keep squeezing off camera without worrying about the whole company looking at you, that sip of coffee your people can sneak in while you or your boss or her boss are talking. Plus, it eliminates a lot of the resentment those with busy schedules might have for being out of their work day. Much of that resentment comes from employee displacement and relocation, only to sit them down and drone on about an exciting new plan to boost sales numbers or something. Boring your team at their desks is ultimately less boring than relocating them to be bored, which keeps them more engaged in their work.
Your team needn’t take notes manually. If you use the right software for the video call you can record the entire meeting. You don’t need to ask questions individually then listen for answers or count a show of hands. Simply make use of Banty’s polling function to easily and efficiently collect the data from those present in your meeting. You don’t need to remind anyone what the question was or physically write it on a giant board. Just post it in the meeting chat.
Beyond the above two reasons of boosting morale (and in turn, professional engagement) and saving time, meeting via video call platform is more efficient for the time, effort and expenses involved with your meeting itself, not just the meeting’s pre and after effects. No need for costly projector slides, no need to keep replacing your team’s projector, and hardly any need to printed distribution materials.
If you’re really looking to boost your team’s efficiency, consider signing up for a Banty Business account. Or, if you manage a much larger team, it might make more sense to subscribe to Banty for a Banty Enterprise account. However, whichever platform you choose, turning more meetings into video calls whenever possible will enhance your workflow and prove a more productively popular choice with your team.
