Companies across the world are embracing change and updating their policies to allow employees to choose their work environments — whether they want to be totally remote, come to the office every day, or something in between. Hybrid and flexible work empower employees to do what’s best for themselves to balance their working style, family obligations, job tasks, and social needs. Autonomous scheduling instills a great amount of trust in employees, boosting their job satisfaction and work-life balance.
And people really like hybrid meetings — 64% of professionals report that hybrid video calls are their preferred meeting style — but like all major workplace transformations, there’s still room for improvement. Hybrid meetings hinge on technology, and without the right collaboration solutions, teams are left feeling disjointed and left out. Connecting with teammates can be significantly harder on-screen than in real life, and there’s a lot of interactions that don't translate very well online with a less-than-ideal hybrid tech stack.
We’ll go into some of the difficulties remote and onsite employees face during hybrid meetings, determined by our State of Hybrid Work survey. We’ll also dive into two different hybrid work tech setups and see how they improve overall collaboration for teams that use them.
Hybrid meeting pain points for remote and in-person employees
According to data from the 2022 State of Hybrid Work, the top three meeting issues for remote employees are not knowing when to interrupt the speaker, audio echo and distortion, and not being able to hear everyone.
On the other side of the conversation, the State of Remote Work revealed that onsite employees face challenges with hybrid work and collaboration, too. One third of employees who work from the office find it harder to build relationships with remote employees, due to a lack of small talk, having a harder time engaging online, and facing overall barriers to bonding without in-person interactions.
Let’s explore some of the pain points of hybrid meetings and a few ways that employees can be unknowingly excluded in a hybrid work environment.
1. Audio issues
Remote employees often can’t hear what’s going on in the meeting room onsite because not everyone is sitting close enough to the laptop or screen’s microphone, or, a teammate simply has a quiet speaking voice. They can also experience audio echo and distortion because of spotty internet connections which can make it hard to follow the thread of a conversation, leading to remote employees not sharing ideas or opinions. Audio cuts out completely occasionally, so remote employees must leave the meeting and come back, disrupting their understanding, interrupting the flow of the meeting, and inhibiting their contributions.
Onsite employees also experience interruptions when their audio feeds cut out, whether they can’t hear the teammates who are remote or they’re not sure if they’re being heard by those calling in. If you’re using a laptop, the built-in speakers may only reach the person sitting directly in front of it, and with any external or background noise — you might as well reschedule until you have the proper equipment.
2. Video issues
Remote employees frequently miss visual cues from facial expressions that happen in-office, especially when someone in the office is screen sharing so you can’t see their face at all. Glitching video is also very distracting, and if it cuts out completely, remote teammates often turn off their video, or leave and rejoin the meeting. Remote teammates also don’t always realize that their video (or audio) is frozen, so there’s awkwardness, gaps, and disjointedness in the conversation until the feed improves.
When teams are brainstorming in person, especially if they're using a whiteboard in the office, it’s also easy to feel very left out, as the whiteboard isn’t always readable online and it’s even harder for them to contribute.
And when video cuts out due to internet interruptions or slowness, it’s distracting for everyone on the call, and it’s disconcerting to not know if you’re coming through clearly for remote participants. If video meeting technology isn’t readily available, in-person team members might opt for an audio-only call. And if tech isn’t easy to use or IT isn’t available, they’re stuck with what they know how to (and can) operate.
3. Communication + collaboration issues
Remote employees can feel excluded from the conversation, especially if there’s more people in the office than there are joining remotely. It can feel hard to feel part of the dialogue, and like they can end up feeling like their ideas don’t matter as much. Remote employees also often struggle to determine when it’s okay to interject or add a thought, so their contributions are often missed altogether. This leads to a lack of visibility — and on teams that don’t actively try to pre-empt this, remote employees can end up with more stagnated careers and fewer opportunities.
Onsite teammates know that it’s best practice to wait until the remote teammates are looped in to start the meeting, but it’s human to want to speak to the people you’re with in the office while you set up the meeting. This can lead to feelings of guilt, like they’re excluding those on the remote side. It also leads to having to repeat what was said earlier for remote employees, which can be frustrating and waste time.
Check in on hybrid team members to find out if they feel supported during meetings
Any employee, whether remote on onsite, can feel a lack of confidence when contributing because they don’t have access to body language to give them cues and tacit feedback. And when someone feels unsure if they’ve been heard by everyone on the call, it can be discouraging and lead to them retreating and not contributing as much as they'd like to.
Hybrid tech solutions that improve meetings and collaboration
All of the issues and concerns mentioned above can be largely solved by investing in great hybrid meeting technology specifically designed to include everyone on a call, every time. This starts with ease of use and how adaptable your solutions are, all the way to having the best tech specs and high-quality connection possible.
At a base level, make sure your employees who are both working from the office or elsewhere have access to high-speed Wifi, noise-canceling headphones, a light source, a desk, and a quiet area to attend calls. Many companies do this by providing a home office setup stipend.
We’ll compare the typical, less than ideal hybrid meeting setup and then share what great hybrid communication can look like with Owl Labs’ suite of hybrid collaboration solutions.
Mediocre hybrid work setup |
Great hybrid work setup |
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When a hybrid meeting is set to start, onsite employees walk to the meeting room with their laptops in hand. One person is chosen to call into the meeting, and their laptop is placed on the table where hopefully, most people in the room can fit in the frame. While they’re setting up, they’re chatting about the topic of the day, effectively starting the meeting without all participants there. The remote participants are waiting in the video waiting room. The onsite teammates find the calendar invite, click on the video conferencing link, and join the video meeting and greet the remote participants, but other in-person conversations are a little distracting so not everyone online gets to say hello. The sound of the meeting is just coming from one laptop’s speakers, so it’s not easy for everyone in the office to hear the remote participants, and remote participants can’t hear people in the office who are soft-spoken or who are sitting farther from the laptop.
Employees leave the meeting hoping they got their ideas across, but not sure that they did. |
Onsite employees walk to a meeting room that’s equipped with a Meeting Owl 360-degree, plug-and-play video conferencing camera and speaker system. They sit down around a table and the meeting begins, with remote and in-person employees all shown on a panoramic screen that automatically highlights whoever’s speaking. The team broadcasts the whiteboard in real-time using the Whiteboard Owl, so the screen is completely visible and readable for everyone on the call. The audio quality is clear and crisp, with audio range of up to 18 feet all the way around the Meeting Owl, and up to 26 feet with the Meeting Owl + Expansion Mic. Background noise is eliminated, and volume leveling ensures that everyone can be heard at all times throughout the meeting. |
Investing in hybrid meeting technology is investing in the future
Your team deserves to know they’re being seen and heard in every meeting. With the best-in-class center-of-table Meeting Owl technology and hybrid meeting accessories, every meeting is an opportunity for equitable collaboration and connection between teammates.
Outline clear hybrid meeting best practices, like using a detailed meeting agenda and following meetings up on Slack, and encourage a culture of relationship-building that’s independent of physical location.
Hybrid isn’t going anywhere, so learn about the solutions that can help your teams connect no matter where they are in the world.
