October 5th 2022
The pandemic forced businesses to come up with different ways to approach their daily operations. Not least of these was ways in which employees could have meetings without all needing to be in the same room. Hybrid meetings were born out of necessity, in a time where so much uncertainty still loomed.
With many people still working from home, they have become a mainstay in today’s business world, allowing people to dial in from across the world to discuss business going’s on. It’s safe to say that this way of hybrid working (working both in the office, and from home across the week) is a new normal.
Today, we’re going to outline what you can do as a business to streamline your hybrid meetings to ensure everyone is on the same page, whether in-person or two thousand miles away.
Keep the Cameras On
Just like in-person, if you are running a hybrid meeting, you need to see the faces of those you’re talking to. Ensuring that those in the meeting who are remote are fully visible to the rest of the team will encourage more engagement in discussions.
Messaging and intent can often be misinterpreted over text-based communications, and just a ‘voice in the background’ can often be overlooked. Ensuring cameras are on will help to encourage those more thoughtful conversations and boost the ability to collaborate effectively during the meeting.
Humans are very visual creatures, so to allow trust and confidence to build within your team, make it a company policy that all people involved in each meeting are required to be visible at all times.
Assign a Facilitator
Facilitators help to guide discussions and make calls to move onto other topics when necessary during meeting times. They need to be assigned beforehand, so they can get to grips with the agenda of the meeting, and even assign more specific timeslots for each item. Think of them as the conductor of an orchestra – without them, some instruments may be out of sync.
It can often be the case that a hybrid meeting is dominated by those who are in the room, not allowing sufficient input from those dialling in from elsewhere. In this case, we would suggest that the facilitator be present in the room (rather than remote), where they are able to give each person in the meeting time to express thoughts and opinions on what is being discussed – and maybe quiet those louder voices from time to time where necessary.
Test Your Technology and Audio Ahead of Time
Technology has a knack of always going wrong the moment you need it to work. In the case of hybrid meetings, this could be that your meeting software goes on the blink, or there’s no audio coming through from some remote employees. To combat this, we suggest always testing your software, speakers and any other tech you’ll be needing in the meeting in the 10-15 minutes prior. Not only will this help the meeting to go on without a hitch but can also give you some insight into other possible tech or platforms you may need to utilise in the future.
Consider doing a test-run of your set up just before the meeting so you have enough time to adjust before employees request to join. You can record this test run and play it back to see if all of your tech is running correctly.
Ensure the Purpose of the Meeting is For Everyone
So, you’ve tested your tech and assigned your facilitator – all is good to go. Now onto the meeting itself.
Each meeting should be attended by those who have an active hand in the contents of what’s being discussed. Be it remote or in-person, those present need to be involved in the work and have something to add to the outcome. Too many times we see meetings full of people who are not directly involved in a particular project yet can sometimes be the loudest voice in the room.
Especially when considering remote attendees, you’ll need to ensure that you’re maximising their opportunity for involvement, as once the meeting ends, they’re unable to quickly verify something, as those in the room could do very easily.
In short, make sure the meeting has purpose for those involved in its goals.
Make Remote Participants Life-Sized
When conducting hybrid meetings, you should always look to make your remote employees life-sized. Now, what do we mean by this? Give them the full screen treatment, as if they are right there in the room with the rest of your employees. Not only is this a great visual indicator to everyone as to who is speaking, but also gives your remote workers equal footing in the meeting itself.
This goes hand-in-hand with our previous point about keeping the cameras on, as ensuring visibility of remote employees will be pivotal in promoting healthy discussion and collaboration. This can be achieved by having a multiple monitor set up, with each remote worker being full screen, or a system in which when a person is talking they are in full focus on a single screen.
We would suggest each remote employee get their own full screen, but this will be to the discretion of your company and how it chooses to handle this situation.
Ask for Feedback!
If a hybrid meeting is successful and everyone is happy, then that’s brilliant for all involved. They can sometimes, however, not be as successful as you’d have hoped, with a few hiccups along the way.
We suggest asking for feedback from your employees about how they feel it went, both in-house and remote. Informative and constructive feedback about each meeting will allow you to develop easier ways of handling bumps further down the road.
If you then implement changes based on this feedback, it will signal to your employees that you are listening and learning, taking their advice on-board, which will help to boost their morale.
Hybrid meetings don’t have to be a minefield which you need to navigate. With proper set-up and attention to those both in-person and dialling in remotely, they can be some of the most successful meetings you’ll ever have as a business, but only with effective facilitation and visibility across all employees equally.
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Head over and take a look at our serviced offices or managed office spaces today, to see what we can do for your business.
