1 In 5 Video Conference Calls Bad, 40% of Participants Disengaged (geekwire.com) 67
Seattle startup Read just released its first study on the effectiveness of video conference calls after measuring more than 3 million virtual meeting minutes since launching in September. Overall, one in five calls had a below average meeting score, and 31% of meetings start late. GeekWire reports: Seattle startup Read just released its first study after measuring more than 3 million virtual meeting minutes since launching in September, when it announced its $10 million seed round. The company's software measures engagement and sentiment of participants on video meetings. For meetings with seven or more people, some of the findings include:
- 50% of participants arrive late
- 40% have below average or poor engagement
- 22% of participants don't say a single word
- 11% don't have video or audio on
"The scale and impact of bad meetings is a massive drain on resources and morale," said David Shim, CEO of Read. Shim said with workers going remote amid the pandemic, people erred on the side of inviting more participants, and the default response of those invited was to accept. This is what introduced "Zoom Fatigue," he said. That's part of what Read is trying to address with its products.
- 50% of participants arrive late
- 40% have below average or poor engagement
- 22% of participants don't say a single word
- 11% don't have video or audio on
"The scale and impact of bad meetings is a massive drain on resources and morale," said David Shim, CEO of Read. Shim said with workers going remote amid the pandemic, people erred on the side of inviting more participants, and the default response of those invited was to accept. This is what introduced "Zoom Fatigue," he said. That's part of what Read is trying to address with its products.
What lesson to learn here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe managers will realize that this means most of these meetings are pointless, and should have been an email.
Or maybe they'll take it as we should all just go back to the office, despite record profits and productivity with everyone working from home.
I'm pretty sure I know what will happen.
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Middle management and up: DOOR NUMBER 2 PLEASE!
These types are constantly clamoring for more reasons to haul people back into the office and more reasons to have a meeting about a meeting where they plan out the meeting that may actually be required.
*Looks at new job description* *CRIES*
Is this a Joke????? (Score:5, Insightful)
"one in five calls had a below average meeting score,'
Are the rest of the calls from Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average?
"...40% have below average or poor engagement"
then at least 60% are above average? Wow.
--
(yes, I know the difference between average and median. But it must be a pretty skew distribution if only 20% are below the average)
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Yes. They are presumably referring to average as in mean, not median, where meetings were likely rated on a five-point scale.
Example ten ratings of: 5 5 5 5 5 5 1 1 1 1
Mean: 3.4
40% of those ratings are below average (3.4).
Re:What lesson to learn here? (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll do the second one if they can get away with it, conveniently ignoring that in-person meetings are about as useful but twice as morale destroying.
The only real differences in in-person meetings is that instead of being on mute, the totally disengaged participants 'me too' a few things so they're perceived to have participated. The late arrivers might be more careful to arrive on time, but that's just so they get there before the last donut gets eaten. They mostly focus on the donut for the first few minutes.
There's a reason "this should have been an email" has risen to meme status.
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It's too bad that they did not do a comparison to in-person meetings. I've actually had some good eperiences with video calls compared to sitting in a board room: engagement was significantly higher, especially from the more introverted participants; apparently they were less shy about speaking up, and were at less of a disadvantage in feeling the natural flow of the discussion and finding opportunities to "seize" the floor. The number of participants who didn't say a single word dropped to
Re:What lesson to learn here? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Maybe the lesson is recognizing slashvertisement. (Score:3)
We had another such "survey" [slashdot.org] a few days ago. Guess what?
That one was also done by a company that sells "solutions" [www.read.ai] for "analytics and monitoring of quality of conference calls". [www.read.ai]
Only they used more FUD, insinuating that unless a manager uses their product - they will lose their job.
And once again, it is another make-work [wikipedia.org] software package for managers with nothing useful to do but not enough prestige to simply sleep in their office or watch porn all day.
Re:What lesson to learn here? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well the thing that really surprised me is 80% of meetings supposedly aren't bad. That's much higher than I expected, so if it holds true that's something I've learned.
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That sounds like bullshit to me.
In my experience, most are bad. Most could have been an email or a shared document that folks co-edit.
My boss just sent out his agenda for his hour long meeting later this week, and it includes an announcement of a special guest sometime in May when we meet, and that he'll be remininding everyone about the mandatory training that most of us have aready done.
This is a 1 hour team meeting, which he refuses to cancel. I am pretty baffled at what's he thinks is going to happen to
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Just because 1:5 meetings are bad doesn't mean 4:5 are good.
The first time I had a supervisory position, it really struck me that I was expected to supervise people and run meetings without any kind of training at all. So I asked myself what a supervisor should do, and I came up with two things: you've got to direct subordinates, and you've got remove any obstacles they run into. Generally people get way too much direction and not nearly enough help; the ratio should be something like 1:10.
It sounds like
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In my experience, most are bad. Most could have been an email or a shared document that folks co-edit.
I have a coffee cup that says "I've just been to another meeting that should have been an email". I make a point of bringing it to meetings...
Re: What lesson to learn here? (Score:2)
Re: What lesson to learn here? (Score:2)
Smart move (Score:5, Insightful)
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The metrics are wrong too. No video on because none is needed (maybe one person is sharing a screen). You don't need to see faces. Second, you don't need everyone to talk. If this is an all hands meeting, or a full team meeting, you do want most people to be quiet and not for every single person to ask a question. The same with training meetings, etc. How they measure "engagement" is a mystery (people in in-person meetings are disengaged too).
That is typical of in-person meetings as well (Score:5, Insightful)
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These stats sound altogether better than what I usually see in in-person meetings.
It looks to me, from these numbers, like making all meetings virtual meetings as a matter of policy will improve engagement and meeting productivity overall.
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My thoughts exactly - the meeting stats for virtual meetings seem way better than in person meetings.
I had a manager for a period of time who had a Friday 9AM meeting where he gathered everyone to do status updates. Meeting usually lasted past 1PM. "Important" people got t
Was going to say the same thing (Score:1)
The only thing that all of these remote meetings really allows is to really gather data on the quality of your typical meeting.
I totally agree, the stats as presented mean nothing to me without knowing similar stats from in person meetings. I've had countless company meetings where even the main organizer showed up late, and half (or more) of the people didn't talk, with many people very checked out.
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One difference, with the in-person meetings, our manager would be pissed if anyone had any sort of screen open during the meeting. Would order anyone looking to maybe do something productive during a mostly pointless meeting to close their laptop and be respectful of the meeting.
With remote meetings, no way to enforce that 'respectfulness' and we can actually get work done during the irrelevant parts of the meetings.
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Ya, we'd have that problem. Meeting is about why we're falling behind, boss is giving a lecture, and three people are busy typing away. Boss shuts up, glares at them, they keep typing away. A minute passes and some of them look up, surprised. Then we had a "keep all laptops closed" rule, but people violated that too easily. Being remote though - of course everyone is "multitasking" (not necessarily on work stuff), myself included. Being remote and multitasking means I'm also not saying "why the hell a
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Mod up to +10 please. In-person presence at desks in the office has about the same measurements as well. If a person is not completely dismissing this as click-bait, they at least need to step back and see it in the larger perspective.
Nothing to see here (Score:1)
I was mildly interested until that last sentence in the summary - "That's part of what Read is trying to address with its products."
I've never heard of Read, but given the study is by them, and that they want to sell a product to address the issues the study highlights, I'd say it's about as trustworthy as [insert whatever you personally find incredibly untrustworthy here].
Move along.
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
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So, they're just the same as real life meetings then?
Well, I'm still trying to figure out how to turn off video in real life meetings but other than that, yeah.
We need to make them more like real meetings... (Score:2)
1 in 5 in-person meetings bad, 40% of participants disengaged.
these metrics smell bunk (Score:3)
- 50% of participants arrive late
- 40% have below average or poor engagement
- 22% of participants don't say a single word
- 11% don't have video or audio on
How many physical meetings start exactly when scheduled, to the minute? Remember that in the physical world, if you're not early, you're late.
How many physical meetings have you ever been to that were a complete waste of your time, or you didn't have anything useful to add?
Regarding the audio/video not being on -- at my work, we actively ask everyone that isn't speaking to stay on mute, and the video wall of people becomes more of a nuisance than a help as soon as someone share's their screen.
Unnecessary meetings? (Score:2)
What percentage of those meetings were unnecessary? In my mind, it's no surprise that people are not engaged and/or arrive late to worthless meetings. Some people definitely have a knack for scheduling meetings when a team chat or email thread would suffice.
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Absolutely. Plus, when some meetings actually happen to be necessary, organisers usually invite half of the house to them. Why, in the name of the deity of your choice?
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Sometimes the employees are worthless too maybe? Sometimes the job duties are assigned by the boss, not assigned by the worker, and those duties include attending meetings. It doesn't matter if they're worthless or not, if you're being paid $100/hour then maybe pay attention in them? You know who I've found really pays attention in meetings almost all the time? Contractors. Because they know they're being paid to attend and so they're very happy to attend (or smart enough to at least pretend to be enga
40% is an understatement (Score:2)
A big one.
A new defintion of average? (Score:3)
From my understanding of maths is that half of the meetings should be above average and half below average. So I have doubts about the claim that "one in five calls had a below average meeting score". That would be 1 in 2 meetings. Therefore shouldn't 2 to 3 meetings out of 5 be below average?
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It really depends on how they're rated, but... not really. It hearkens back to median vs mode.
For example, 40 meetings are 5/5, 10 meetings are 0/5, for an average meeting score of 4/5. As such, 1/5 of the meetings are below 4/5.
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No that's "median", not "average". I am pretty confident that far more than half of the employees at your company make less than the average salary there.
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All Meetings should... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have an auto-survery, anonymously done by a 3rd party company, offering the participants to click any of the following:
1) Relevant to me, I needed to be here
2) Relevant to the company, but barely helpful to me.I should have got a memo summarizing the contents with a required reply to confirm I have read it.
3) Relevant to the company, but not at all me. I did not even need to get a memo, let alone attend.
4) Not relevant to the company. This meeting was unnecessary and wasted company time.
Similar to real life (Score:2)
I can't say that going to a bunch of in person meetings was a significant improvement. People who tend pay attention will do it online or on person. People who tend to be disinterested or easily distracted will still be the same.
In other words... (Score:2)
40% of people don't need to be on the call, have nothing to add, and are only there because somebody else told them they had to be.
So what is the competition like? (Score:3)
Except for the ability to mute the mike and turn off the camera what other advantage/disadvantage exists for real f2f meetings?
Before the smart phones became pervasive, I had about 6 to 10 minutes to grab the attention of the big fish who come to my project proposal meetings. Live, not zoom. Then the infernal smart phones came. They are big fish, they are important, IT bent all the rules and created support for their email and calendar to their smart phones. That's it if I don't get them in the first three minutes, might as well close the meeting early and get some work done.
The top honcho is the first one to look down on his smart phone, and slowly start swiping. Then all his side-kicks start checking their smart phones, checking email, sports scores, doctor appointment, book tickets and hotels, ...
None of my underlings whip out their phones, but they have seen the presentation five times already and edited the presentation, contributed material, slaved over simulations for days to produce the 10 second animation of crack-propagation in the bridge column ..., nothing new, they are there only to answer questions if the big shots ask something. So they are resigned chaffing under my droning voice. Aching for the meeting to end. Given the abysmal comprehension and attention span of the top dogs, none of the questions will make sense. And they can't understand the answer anyway. They will hear what they always wanted to hear. "So yes, I agree, we should be able to wrap it up and deliver in six weeks?" And the title of my talk was, "Long term resource planning for versions 2022, 2023 and 2024". Shit! They didn't even read the title slide. We were all wasting time.
Why diss the zoom meetings? At least I can mute my mic, turn off the video and code in the other window while the big fish drone on about "inspiring the developers to deliver the next generation of new and exciting bonuses for us ^H^H^H^H products for the customers"...
Read is trying to address with its products (Score:2)
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I'm guessing they might be trying to build a better video conference scheduling solution? Probably would be good to design something so when you create a new meeting and start inviting people, it defaults to invitees being "optional" to attend. Make it a bigger deal to select the mandatory attendees.
But all in all, I think this is much more about training and corporate culture changing to do fewer and shorter meetings.
The missing statistic... (Score:2)
95% of meetings are pointless wastes of time, money and resources where a simple email or slack message would have sufficed.
So this is just like regular meetings. (Score:1)
Loooooool. No SHTSHRLK. (Score:2)
I have been responsible for the hardware side of video conferences since the early Polycom days. My take is that Video Conferencing equipment was sold as a way of bringing people into meetings when they couldn't be physically present for "reasons". The reality is that if people wanted to be there, they would be. If they really wanted to be but really couldn't be, they'd do a conference phone call and have a copy of the paperwork or PPT at their end.
Average conversation from someone who doesn't want to be at
Count them in the hundreds... (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who has been a corporate exec for decades can't begin to count all of the pointless meetings I've been in. Virtual or In Person matter not.
Elon Musk has his faults, but he has one rule for his employees I love: If you're in a meeting and it is not beneficial for you to be there you need to get up and leave. You are not rude. The people who invited you are.
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Elon Musk has his faults, but he has one rule for his employees I love: If you're in a meeting and it is not beneficial for you to be there you need to get up and leave. You are not rude. The people who invited you are.
This is an important rule, but one that's actually less critical in videoconferences. In fact, I think with VC it's often a good idea to "attend" meetings even when the probability that there will be some value in your attendance is low. Why? Precisely because you can disengage and accomplish other work, while being available in case a relevant question comes up. That's somewhat possible in live meetings, but not to the same degree.
How's that different from in-person meetings? (Score:2)
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At some companies I've worked for all of the management was late to every single meeting because the previous meeting went long. Mostly because they were late to it. I'm pretty sure that being late stat is pretty close to normal for in-person meetings too.
Not all of that is bad (Score:3)
Some meetings are covering issues reported on a project. It may make sense for everyone not involved in the subsystem being discussed to be doing other work until their subsystem is brought up. Sometimes it makes sense to leave the audio off until the meeting gets to your system.
We certainly don't want meetings where people are graded by how much they say...
Things like zoom don't really provide the one-on-one interation - cameras are not centered on screens so all eye contact clues fail. Its sometimes easier to talk to a blank screen than to someone who is looking a little to your left as if fascinated by something else (when they really are looking at your image)
Require training (Score:2)
Most managers either don't know how to run meetings efficiently or use it as a chance to be a blowhard.
This isn't a study, its an agenda. (Score:2)
Its safe to assume one of their clients has a vested interest in office space real estate. The least they could do is fabricate plausible statistics.
Obvious solution (Score:1)
This is not really a study (Score:1)
Measuring something completely out of context is not doing a study. They should have gathered the same data, with same methodology, for in-person meetings and only then draw conclusions.
As it is, they applied a set of measurements without a control group or indeed any kind of statistical rigor. Then they use that to push their opinion on how online work performs. Nice try, but this is simply a stunt designed to justify outdated policies, probably supported by managers incapable of change.
when a metric becomes a target... (Score:2)
Math much? (Score:2)
"- 40% have below average or poor engagement"
Ummm, do they know what "average" means?
Better then in person (Score:1)