How to Get Your Team To Participate During Virtual Meetings

In today’s world, especially after the outbreak of Covid-19, virtual has become the new normal. And virtual meetings have surely topped the list of imperative tools used during the pandemic. But, although virtual meetings are a great and possibly essential tool, there are ample challenges that come along with it. The majority of the business world has been attending regular virtual meetings for almost two years, and it has since become harder for employees to focus, once the novelty wore off. This has been due to a number of reasons such as a sudden change in routine, a shared home and office space, stress of the pandemic, and more. With the adjustments needed to be made to learn new ways to interact in a much less dynamic environment, both focus and a sense of teamwork have suffered. So, you will have to do more in order to get your team to participate during virtual meetings.

But virtual meetings have been around a long time before the pandemic and it will continue to be there much after. In fact the pandemic has merely hastened the process and forced everyone out of a collective comfort zone and into a more effective method of collaborating and connecting considering the bigger picture. And yet this method is not fully effective without the participation of everyone involved.

Here are a few essential ways that will help you get your team to participate during virtual meetings:

1. Discussion over dictation

One of the more common and obvious reasons to witness a lesser participation rate of your team members is, them not having a reason to participate. Asking for their opinions, with genuine interest, is the easiest way to make them participate in the meeting. It is well-established that discussions are far more fruitful than dictations ever will be. Ask them to put forward their views, share their feedback or discuss challenges they might be facing. It not only makes them participate but also creates a clearer image of the task at hand.

2. Use an appropriate team collaboration platform

Out of the surfeit of platforms available, it is easy to be confused and carried away by what other companies or teams might be using. But you need to evaluate the different platforms to understand which will suit and complement the process of your team. What will work tremendously for another team at your organization might not suit the needs of your team. It is not necessary to use video meeting platforms, phone meeting platforms, and team collaboration platforms all at once. Choose the platforms you think will aid your team to be more productive or ask your team to decide and pick the one that has been called up by the majority. Eg. You could use collaboration platforms for team members to follow up with each other’s progress through the day, daily phone meetings, and weekly video calls.

3. Always schedule meetings

A great way to ensure team members work at home or remotely as effectively as they did in the office is to treat their time and work as you did in the office. It is an unhealthy practice to assume a meeting can be called any time while your team is working remotely. Plan tasks and projects in a way that you give employees the very minimum of an hour’s notice before a meeting along with a mandatory agenda for the meeting. This will allow them to come to a much more natural pause in the work that they might have already been doing, as well as be able to mentally prepare for the upcoming meeting. It will also give them the time to organize their surroundings to accommodate the sudden meeting. This focus on the organization of time will lead to you being able to get your team to participate during virtual meetings because they will be prepared for it.

4. Keep a check on the duration

Meetings that require employees to be present for hours will result in fatigue and lower productivity. Most of the time goes into discussing what to do, hence leaving a very little will to actually do the necessary. Keep the meetings as short as possible, to the point, and make sure to listen to what every participant has to say. If a longer duration is the need, then allow them the necessary breaks. A pre-planned agenda of what will be discussed in the meeting is really helpful to not only keep the meeting from running multiple hours, but to also keep the conversation on track in order to achieve what the meeting set out to achieve.

5. Limit the number of people on a call

While it is important to have all your team members interacting with one-another, if you have a large team, this might not be a possibility on a regular basis. In this case, break up the large team into smaller teams and call only who is necessary for that particular project. This will allow for everyone to participate and will ensure no employee is left feeling unseen or unheard. Have larger team meetings after the smaller team meetings are held that will possibly bring together all the separate projects in order to address and oversee their progress. You will need to find that balance between not isolating the different teams and yet ensuring they all collaborate and work as one large team on a regular basis.

6. Include video calls

Another great way to get your team to participate during virtual meetings is to include video calls into your collaboration schedule. While it is not necessary to always have video calls, be sure to have video calls every once in a while. This not only makes employees instantly attentive, but it also improves the sense of being a team since face-to-face conversations and collaborations have come to naught. The lack of feeling like part of a team will slowly reduce their focus and eventually lead to lesser participation or no participation at all.

The above tips will surely help you to get your team to participate during virtual meetings. While it might be too much to try all of them at once, you could implement one tip at a time in order to slowly improve team participation. Making it happen might seem like a challenge but the will to overcome challenges is what makes a great leader.