How to Avoid Zoom Fatigue in Your Weekly Virtual Meetings

Therefore, we become more conscious of our responses and expressions. For example, we make sure we’re making eye contact with the webcam lens and nod dramatically to display agreement. We also watch ourselves to make sure we’re not accidentally giving the wrong cues. The problem here is that having to monitor all of these nonverbal cues increases our cognitive load. Sometimes little parts of your home life, like a pet climbing on your desk, can creep into your home life.

As a society, we are constantly evolving and adapting to new things. We always need to adjust to a “new normal”, particularly when it comes to interacting with other individuals. For example, when elevators were first invented, there was no “protocol” for where to stand, whether or not to make eye contact with others, etc. Gradually people began to find norms and now we all understand how to use elevators in our daily lives. Before you try to get anything on a calendar, be honest with yourself about if the meeting really needs to occur. When you invite people to a meeting, carefully consider if you are showing a respect for attendees’ time and if this is helping them to use their time effectively.

Stanford researchers identify four causes for ‘Zoom fatigue’ and their simple fixes

At Recruitcs, we instituted a practice called “speedy meetings.” Speedy meetings are where instead of the typical default of having one hour or half hour long meetings, we have 50 or 25 minutes as our default. Google calendars offer this as a feature that can be activated, and this change can be made in seconds. This allows teams to take a break in between meetings to reset and realign by looking at something other than the computer screen or webcam.

• While working from home, it’s so easy to forget to step back and take a break from your work.
• You often have to decipher what they are saying when there is a bad connection, while trying to avoid any incursions caused by family or pets.
• But you may also want to look at reducing meeting frequency, scheduling optional meetings, and taking time off to increase productivity and reduce the occurrence of Zoom fatigue.

If you are looking for virtual meeting best practices, then we recommend recording your Zoom calls. When working remotely, employees may feel pressured to join every single meeting. However, by recording your meetings, you will provide relief to your team by giving them a chance to choose which meetings to join. If a team member cannot attend a call, they can easily reference the recording. Not to mention, employees may be able to watch the meeting at one-and-a-half or two times speed or skip non-relevant portions to save on time.

Before you agree to Zoom, confirm that a meeting is in fact needed.

Of 10,322 people surveyed about video calls, 13.8% of the women reported feeling either “very” or “extremely” fatigued by Zoom calls. This is compared to only about 5.5% of men feeling equally affected. Recruitics has a highly collaborative work culture where we are constantly engaging with each other, our customers, our partners, and our https://remotemode.net/ vendors. Even before COVID, we were well disciplined in the use of Zoom to synchronize our communication across the globe. However, the pandemic forced the entire world to suddenly adapt the way we communicate. Even though we were able to revamp our work culture to be virtual, the amount of back-to-back Zoom meetings can take a toll.

So, short breaks should also be built into remote working arrangements. While virtual instruction was once viewed as a flexible option, it has recently become a staple of our academic and professional lives. Not only does taking downtime for yourself have mental and productivity benefits, but how you spend your downtime can be physically beneficial.

What are the main symptoms of Zoom fatigue?

By using backgrounds on Zoom, you can appear as if you are sitting on a beach, cafe, or nicely decorated office. Your virtual background can be a fun conversation starter during your meeting. Once you have created an agenda for your next meeting, send it to your team at least one day before your call. Sending a plan will allow your team to prepare for the meeting beforehand.

Make sure to attend the people who really need to be involved – no more, no less. It’s no secret that the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically altered how we operate both personally and professionally. Our routines and natural rhythms have been flipped on their heads – from constant handwashing to mask-wearing to virtual work meetings. https://remotemode.net/blog/remote-work-burnout-fatigue-and-how-to-avoid-it/ So at this time this is very much tough for those who are sitting up at home and also working at the same time as attending a zoom meeting. Both the amount of eye contact we engage in on video chats, as well as the size of faces on screens is unnatural. Popular video chat platforms have design flaws that exhaust the human mind and body.