VIDEO MEETINGS
5 COACHING TIPS FOR EMPLOYEES
Thanks to the pandemic and the ensuing shift to working from home, video meetings have become a staple of many employees’ workdays. They’ve replaced the in-person meetings employees were accustomed to in the office, as well as the old standby of conference calls to bridge geography. They offer a ton of advantages, including easier communication and relationship building, but you may want to provide your managers with some guidelines for coaching their teams on a few basic dos and don’ts.
Here are five questions that might come up:
IS YOUR CAMERA ON?
The whole point of a video meeting is to simulate face-to-face interaction — which doesn’t work so well without the faces. Ask your managers to encourage employees to keep their cameras on. When participants join by audio only, they’re less likely to be asked questions or to speak up with comments. Plus, if one person declines to appear on video, it can start a domino effect of other participants turning off their cameras also. To be fully engaged, it helps to have everyone participating face to face.
ARE YOU WEARING PANTS?
We’ve all seen the funny video clips of newscasters mistakenly revealing their boxers — and other faux pas from the waist down. Beyond being fully clothed, you might want employees to be reasonably groomed and ready to work. Then again, being able to dress casually is one of the perks of working from home. Perhaps you want to leave it up to individual managers to set expectations for their own teams and suggest that those expectations might be different for internal and external meetings.
WAIT, THIS IS A CLIENT MEETING?
If employees are in the habit of showing up at video meetings in the same super casual clothes they’d wear loafing around the house on a Saturday morning, their managers might want to coach them to dress differently for meetings with clients, vendors or other external groups. Consider your company culture and your industry though. Business casual for video meetings will mean something different for employees of a bank or insurance provider than for a gaming company or athletic brand.
WHAT’S THAT IN THE BACKGROUND?
Employees may not think twice about what’s in the background when they plop down on the couch or at the kitchen table to log in to a video meeting. Not everyone has a dedicated home office, and even if they do, they may prefer to move around to different locations during the day. However, your managers might want to make their teams aware if certain backgrounds seem to be an issue. For example, they might just want to turn their computer away from an unmade bed or a fully stocked bar cart.
ARE YOU ON MUTE?
Shout after me: “You’re on mute! You’re on mute!” It’s the rookie mistake we all make: Muting our microphone to reduce background noise and then forgetting to unmute before we start speaking. Managers can coach their employees to be well versed in the mechanics of whatever platform they’re using, from familiarity with their mute button to what they need to click to share their screen. These sorts of technical glitches can slow the meeting down and lose important momentum.
HOW CAN WE HELP?
If you’d like to see Tribe’s capabilities presentation, please reach out to:
Steve Baskin
President and Chief Strategy Officer
404-256-5858
tribeinc.com