COVID-19 Remote Meetings Quick Tips
I’ve been working mostly from home for the last five years, and I want to share a few tips related to meetings for those who are currently in a rushed transition to remote operation.
1) Your team is likely to have a lot more meetings initially, as it will take time to transition to more asynchronous communication. You can minimize distractions by agreeing with the team to schedule all the meetings during dedicated hours every day.
2) Multitasking during remote meetings is a lot more common. Try to make 10 or 15 minutes your new default meeting duration. Without a need to walk to a conference room, 30 minutes is usually more than needed with a habit of joining and ending meetings on time. Always enable video.
3) Your team members are likely to feel out of the loop. Over-inviting people to meetings is NOT a solution. Try to record most of the meetings and share recordings with everyone. This works best when meetings are short and dedicated to a single topic.
4) More people will feel lonely/socially isolated. Start scheduling regular informal 1-1 discussions with your peers, and everyone you would interact with casually in the office during your natural breaks. They can be just 10-15 minutes long and happen during your dedicated meeting hours.
