With the current health crisis sweeping over the world, millions of workers have started remote working. For a vast majority of them, this change is going to be a permanent one. In this situation, virtual meetings have become the order of the day.
The apparent result of this is that the companies are looking for better and more efficient ways to make the meetings seamless and hassle-free. They are leveraging modern technology’s various tools and features to make virtual meetings even more comfortable to access and participate in than physical meetings. Keeping this scenario in mind here’s bringing you five ways to better virtual meetings with technology.
1. Telepresence as the Alternative to Video Conferencing
Video conferencing is all about connecting several people sitting far away to help them carry out their daily work. However, telepresence is all about transmitting your presence to remote locations.
The usage of telepresence involves leveraging technical options for removing the spatial divide that exists between people by way of video conferencing. Tools like The BotEyes Telepresence Robot can transmit personalities in full size and high resolution to remove the virtual barrier and simulate people’s actual presence in a conference room.
The addition of the latest audio and video technology delivers the enthralling feeling of being close to each other in an actual office setting. With the advent of telepresence robotics, virtual meetings would not feel so “virtual” anymore, making this a worthy investment.
2. Selecting the Right Technology
Consider your plan to select the most suitable platform to use for your virtual meetings. The right platform for quick check-in differs based on whether you are going for a decision-making or brainstorming session. Some of the popular virtual meeting platforms you can consider are Skype, Cisco WebEx, Citrix GoToMeeting, etc. You should take some time to review every platform available to you before deciding on what you want to use. Several features like online whiteboards or web polling might cost a few extra bucks. Read technology blogs to make the correct choice.
It is essential to mention in this regard that video conferencing comes with both benefits and drawbacks. It’s able to offer participants crucial non-verbal cues and keep them engaged. But it might make some people self-conscious and uncomfortable, and they might prefer voice-only meetings over video conferencing.
3. Getting Familiar with Technology
It is essential to make sure that all the users are familiar with the technology you plan to use. Whether it is Teams, Webex, Zoom, or any other app, people need to know a couple of things, and IT and leadership can help with that. These factors might seem like a minor thing, but users need to understand how to mute, share screens, and turn the video on and off.
Employees need to practice, even if it’s only for ten minutes, before joining any important meeting via video. Other issues to look into are the field-of-view for other attendees, the room’s lighting, and the people’s distance from the camera. Several virtual meeting apps have areas where the users can familiarize themselves with such problems before going into a meeting.
4. Controlling Secured Access to Meetings
Security and complete protection of the meeting access are the main elements that the enterprises have to ensure virtual meetings become more commonplace. The advancement of technology has made it easy for you to enable the best practices for upholding virtual meetings’ security details.
Here are some of the best practices that can prevent unwanted access to meetings:
- Set meeting password while scheduling virtual meetings.
- Locking the meeting to make sure no other individual can join
- Disable the ‘Join before Host’ option to prevent the attendees from entering a meeting before its host.
- Enabling a co-host who can help you in moderating the meeting
- Disabling file transfers and using cloud sharing platforms
- Disabling the option to let removed participants rejoin a meeting
- Allowing a waiting room to make the host control entrance
5. Let Technology Dominate Selectively
The widespread reliance on virtual meetings and video conferencing software has made technology dominate even when it only complicates. When the aim is to make virtual meetings better with technology, it is crucial to understand tech usage limits and bounds.
It is okay to use a real whiteboard or hold up an actual printed page once in a while. Displaying a model or sharing a roughly made spreadsheet should also be okay if that gets the job done faster and more effectively. If trying to use additional virtual meeting tools for syncing virtual screens or documents for such steps is too complicated and takes up a lot of your time, switch to the more comfortable and faster manual ways of working without second thoughts.
Final Thoughts
Organizations are increasingly relying on virtual meetings or communicating with team members across the country and even beyond. The tech innovators bring better and more advanced offerings to the forefront to meet the organizations’ demands. This way, both the employees and employers benefit from integrating modern technology into virtual conference rooms. So, if you have a company and need to organize many virtual meetings, incorporate the five ways mentioned above and have an incredible experience.
