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RWS and the RWS logo are trademarks of Beka Business Media If you type “hybrid working” into the search bar of any online image bank, the first page of results will be filled with images of happy workers collaborating across a video conference. Indeed, it’s become the cliché of the hybrid work environment, with video conferencing often the butt of office humor. We’ve spent so much time on Zoom, Teams, Webex, etc. that “Zoom fatigue” recently entered the business language lexicon. While the growth in video conferencing has been mind-boggling (Microsoft estimates that online meetings among Team users increased 153 percent between March 2020 and February 2022), video meeting fatigue doesn’t seem to be damaging the work experience. Rather, video conferencing could be driving some positive effects in terms of employee engagement. In its research on how hybrid work conditions impact company culture, MIT Sloan Management Review found that more than 50 percent of business leaders working in hybrid environments said the ability to express their personal opinions in the workplace has improved since the start of the pandemic. Only 7 percent of all respondents said it had gotten worse. A similar percentage of respondents said that feelings of inclusion and diversity have improved in their organization. “Even in regions where expressing personal opinions and ideas is subject to strict social norms, such as avoiding controversy in a group setting, things seem to be becoming more flexible,” said MIT SMR researchers. “Respondents in South America and Asia say the ability to express a personal opinion has improved even more so than in Europe and the United States.” Video conferencing, it turns out, could be “leveling the playing field,” offering a “very powerful tool” to improve the quality and fairness of meetings and discussions, said researchers at MIT Sloan School of Management. Everyone being in a small box on the screen, they argue, opens the room to more voices and perspectives and effectively alters the dynamics of the traditional business meeting. For starters, online meetings diminish leaders’ ability to control workers with an imposing physical stance and gestures, said Wayne Turmel, cofounder of the Remote Leadership Institute. “When people are meeting in person, it is much easier for leaders to use gestures to show power over the folks in the room,” he continued, “But when everybody is the same size in a box on a screen, that’s much more difficult to do.” On most videoconferencing platforms, a skilled facilitator has many tools available to promote fairness, agreed Thomas Kochan, Professor Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Kochan pointed to the ability to mute everyone until they want to speak by using a raise-your-hand feature. “Doing so prevents more aggressive participants from interrupting others or speaking over them,” said MIT SMR researchers. The chat function, meanwhile, allows people to address the group without interrupting whoever’s speaking and enables private side conversations without distracting others. And according to Turmel, online/remote meetings have given executives an opportunity to develop new levels of empathy. “Through remote meetings, they can see what is going on in people’s lives and relate that to the challenges at work,” he told MIT SMR. “Before the pandemic, if you were working from home, you kept your phone on mute. You put the dog in the garage and kept children out of the room. You did everything to conceal the fact that you were working at the dining room table. But then the pandemic hit, and we really got to know each other as people.” Senior executives long have been advised about the benefits of casually chatting up employees in hallways or by their desks to hear what’s on their minds. This type of “management by walking around” goes a long way toward making employees feel heard, while strengthening executive decision making by providing firsthand knowledge of what’s actually happening in an organization. The challenge, argued Kochan, is that many executives don’t have the time to walk through offices, especially if the company has multiple sites. Teleconferencing tools, he said, can make these opportunities grow exponentially. So, while online and video meetings may lack some of upsides of in-person engagement, employee interaction within the digital realm does come with tangible benefits. Video Killed the Office Bully 6 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
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