[Webinar] How to Beat Meeting Overload!

meeting overload is a growing epidemic in many organizations. This year, it has even taken on a new name: video call fatigue, the tendency to reproduce bad in-person meeting habits through visioconférence — as we now call it when video calls multiply endlessly. The phenomenon has intensified so much that people now talk about “Zoom fatigue“. How can you limit meeting overload and video call fatigue ? What best practices should you implement? And how can a collaborative tool help make meetings more effective?

That was the topic of our December 15, 2020 webinar « How to Beat Meeting Overload (and Video Call Fatigue)! », during which three speakers came to share advice on reducing the number and duration of remote meetings :

• Philippe Pinault, Co-founder and CEO of Talkspirit, a collaborative platform that streamlines remote meetings
• Caroline del Torchio, HR and Management Consultant, Director of the consultancy Identité RH, author of “Facilitating Remote Meetings” (2013) and “10 Keys to Preparing Your Company for Remote Work” (2021)
• Alain Posty, Head of Digital Development at CNPF (the French National Forestry Centre)

Let’s explore the causes and risks of video call fatigue, best practices to avoid it, and the role of collaborative tools.

The Causes of Video Call Fatigue

Pour Caroline del Torchio, video call fatigue stems from three main causes:

1. meeting overload, the multiplication of meetings that are often long and sometimes unnecessary.

2. a culture of oral communication and informality, very common in organizations, which is challenged by remote work — and which, to compensate, leads to organizing even more meetings.

Read also: [Expert Perspective] Bertrand Duperrin: Towards a Hybrid Way of Working

3. the manager’s need for control: to make sure everyone is working, managers sometimes hold even more meetings than usual.

The Risks of Video Call Fatigue

The multiplication of video meetings carries several risks for employees:

• exhaustion : « a remote meeting is more draining than an in-person one »
• loss of rhythm : « video meetings constantly interrupt our work, which reduces our productivity »
• disengagement : « it’s harder to stay focused on what’s being said when you’re remote rather than in person »

How to Beat Meeting Overload and Video Call Fatigue?

Fortunately, there are several best practices to reduce the number and length of your remote meetings:

Before the meeting

1. Limit the number of attendees and the duration of your meetings. If you receive an invitation to a meeting where your presence isn’t needed, don’t hesitate to decline.
2. Ask your team for input on how to make your meetings more effective, and agree on key principles, for example: when is a meeting actually necessary? How often should they take place? What is the ideal duration?
3. Prepare a collaborative agenda to spark participants’ interest, drive accountability, and make decision-making easier during the meeting.

During the meeting

4. Start by reminding participants of the rules and time management approach. You can assign a timekeeper role to one participant, who will ensure the meeting starts and ends on time and that all agenda items are covered.
5. Designate a note-taker who will write the meeting notes in a collaborative document.
6. Address in the meeting only the points that concern all participants.
7. Share your screen to keep the meeting more interactive.
8. At the end, run a closing round to gather feedback from participants.

After the meeting

9. Share the meeting notes with all participants.
10. Create an action plan, assign responsibilities, and track progress from one meeting to the next.
11. Survey participants about their experience via a post or poll on your réseau social interne.

Other best practices:

12. Block meeting-free time slots in your calendar — ideally:
    • Every day, a 20-minute break in the morning and afternoon
    • Once or twice a week, 2 to 3 meeting-free hours
13. Handle more topics asynchronously (before or after video calls) — for example, via instant messaging. Build a culture of written communication that clarifies “who does what” and “who decides what” — without needing a meeting for it.

Real-World Experience: How the CNPF Transformed Its Meeting Culture with a Collaborative Tool

Changing meeting culture requires equipping teams with the right tools. At CNPF (the French National Forestry Centre), adopting the Talkspirit collaborative platform completely transformed meetings, and more broadly everything related to collaborative work.

Read also: Boosting Productivity by Centralizing Exchanges: The CNPF Story

Before the platform launched, teams held many in-person meetings with no clearly defined agenda. « Today, employees exchange information much more quickly and easily through chat, which translates into fewer meetings. With the ability to share and co-edit documents, we can now make changes asynchronously », says Alain Posty, Head of Digital Development. Meetings purely for the sake of working on documents are no longer necessary.

« With Talkspirit, we also have more direct exchanges between colleagues » throughout the day, which makes our meetings more effective. « The only meetings we’ve kept are those that allow us to make decisions. » The result: decisions are made much faster than before.

Finally, outils collaboratifs improve cohésion. Chat makes informal exchanges easier every day, outside of meetings. « Thanks to this mix of synchronous and asynchronous exchanges, I notice that our team is much more united in remote work », says Alain Posty — with a strong impact on meeting effectiveness.

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Conclusion

Are you ready to put meeting overload and video call fatigue behind you? Thanks to a range of integrated communication and collaboration features (video conferencing, chat, calendar, document sharing…), collaborative tools can help you put these best practices into action across your team.

Looking to adopt a collaborative tool but not sure where to start? Check out our methodological guide: “ 8 steps to choosing your collaborative platform ”.

Access the Methodological Guide

In this guide, you’ll find: the 8 steps to choosing a collaborative platform, key elements for defining your needs, and decisive criteria for comparing the best solutions on the market.

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Author: Emmanuelle Abensur