Let’s face it: we are all fed up with it. In the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic, the use of Zoom and other tools for online meetings it could also be enjoyable, even thrilling. We were getting used to a new world that had been undergoing a drastic digital acceleration, and the fact of replacing in-person meetings with online ones allowed not only to continue without (too much) difficulty in business meetings, but also to keep in touch with friends and family.
But after a while the fatigue came. Who has maintained even in recent months the habit of “aperitifs in call”? Who doesn’t feel like online meetings have become so numerous that they negatively affect productivity, job satisfaction, and even personal life balance? This non-stop of screens hosting talking faces has become exhausting (according to studies, even more so for women).
It was inevitable that this experience was also faced by the person who invented it: the CEO, Eric Yuan, who writing on the CNN website he admitted how difficult it was also for him “to suddenly pass from a social environment lived in person to a world in which we see only images of faces on the screen”. So, after facing a record day with 19 video meetings (“It was a struggle to get to the end,” he admitted), Yuan has decided to write down a series of tips for those who are faced with multiple videoconferences every day.
Because Zoom makes women more tired
Andrea Daniele Signorelli
What to do to survive video meetings
First of all, it is essential to take some breaks from the computer: get up, stretch your legs, rest your eyes and your brain. For this purpose it is useful that we have a remote dating fixed duration of 25 or 55 minutes (or even less), to rest between one and the other and stem the tendency to river meetings that go on for no particular reason. Yet another case is that of online meetings that have no reason to be: Yuan himself recalled the importance of make more use of e-mail or internal office chats, limiting video meetings only to occasions when we would have deemed it appropriate to organize a meeting in the real world as well.
Furthermore, it has been stressed several times how useful it is close the window showing the image of our face, so you can look at your colleagues without being obsessed with how we look in their eyes. It may seem like a small thing, but many studies have analyzed how much and why that window that houses our face causes a considerable amount of stress.
Finally, according to Yuan, assure employees that they will be there days when no online meetings will be scheduled it can relieve the stress of excessive videoconferencing, just as it is important that we avoid those in the evenings and on weekends: at a time when we are all working from home, it is crucial that the boundaries between professional and private life are clear . Especially now that we are preparing to return.
Disconnection day, stop the ‘Zoom fatigue’. “Dedicate yourself to yoga today”
by Giuliano Aluffi
Our life after video meetings
Speaking of returning, what will the return to normal working life be like? “I think we will find ourselves somewhere between fully in-person and fully remote work,” Yuan added. It also confirms this an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group, according to which companies expect that at least one third of employees will continue to work remotely in the future, while 70% of the managers interviewed admitted that they are better disposed than in the past towards smart working.
Net of all this, it will be necessary to understand how many employees, at least at the restart, they will want continue working from home and still meet colleagues only in the form of faces on a screen. Even with the help of the advice of mr. Zoom.
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