9 do’s and don’ts of video conferencing etiquette

Are you a remote worker already? Or have you become a remote worker recently because of COVID 19? By now, you will have been on at least one video conference call to connect with your bosses, teams, partners, or customers.

Ever since the remote meeting has become an essential part of the workflow, 96% of the workers prefer it to be a video conference call as it improves the connectedness of remote team members. Video conferencing has several advantages over email or audioconferencing. A recent study by Owl Labs state that video conferencing performs 30% better than audio-only setups for communication.

And while you can know how to set up video calling for a conference, it is also important to be aware of how to follow the correct etiquette for video conferencing. As video conferencing has become the core component for the remote workforce, it’s important to educate employees about the dos and don’ts of video collaboration. Brushing up video etiquette can help you to ensure that all participants are involved, and each meeting is productive.

Here are some etiquette that you must follow

1. Be organized and on-time for the meeting

• For any meeting, the standard rule is to be punctual. As it might be embarrassing to sneak through a meeting physically as you can cause a distraction to the speakers because everything is visible in a video meeting.
• To be organized try to be aware of the agenda of the meeting to put out your contributions or ask questions regarding your doubts.

2. Test your technology

Even in a technologically advanced world, technical difficulties are all too common.

• Before joining a call or hosting one is making sure that your hardware works (microphone, speakers, and headphones) and that your internet speeds are fast enough to support a decent level of quality for a video call.
• Make a proper choice of video conferencing software that is most comfortable and reliable for all attendees.

3. Mute yourself when not speaking

• Microphones will pick up faint sounds like typing, coughing, chewing, or tapping your pen.
• As a common courtesy to others, always mute your microphone when you’re not speaking.
• Don’t talk over each other. Use the chat function to ask questions

4. Minimize distractions

It is important to make sure that everyone is focused on the meeting at hand.

• Put your smartphone in silence or out of sight during the meeting.
• Make your background plain wall.
• If you are sharing your screen with the other participants, try to disable pop-up notifications

5. Professional Look

Not all video conference calls are created equal and your outfits should match the expectations of your audiences.

• Don’t look sloppy: Dress for your audience.
• It’s probably best to adhere to your company’s dress code.
• Do not wear bright colored dresses

6. Camera Positioning and Lighting

Don’t allow your camera positioning to become a distraction to other participants in your video meeting.

• Make sure the camera is in a stable position and focused at your eye level. Be sure that your camera is properly positioned on the main monitor you will be using for the video conference.

• Also, be sure you have good lighting; natural side lighting is usually the best.
• Find a quiet, private space or use a white noise machine so that you can hear your meeting clearly.

7. Visuals for participation enhancement

• Visuals are a great way to keep a meeting interesting and fresh.
• Most of the video conferencing software allows you to wirelessly share applications, PowerPoint presentations, videos, charts, graphs, and anything else for real-time collaboration.

8. Pay Attention

Don’t let yourself get distracted during the meeting. You might be tempted to work on other tasks during the video meeting. Try not to do that!

• Multitasking during video meetings is not advisable.
• Just focus on the meeting and being present with your co-workers.
• Your video presence tends to be magnified and it will be more obvious to your co-workers that you aren’t paying attention.

9. Convert to Smart Meetings

Remote meetings and travel restrictions have created a new meeting behavior. With most of the work communications going virtual, employees tend to record meetings of their daily standup calls, customer calls, and team meetings, etc to keep a track of their conversations and prioritize their daily tasks, and follow-ups.

But it’s tedious as making notes is a manual process and what’s even more cumbersome is searching for the actions, topics, and keywords discussed on the calls.

While no one has the time to rerun the full recordings, meeting assistants made it easy to bridge this gap in remote-work communication.

• Meeting assistants help you transcribe your meeting minutes, captures action items (discussed and agreed upon), and collect your entire meeting history in one place, so you can focus on the meeting at hand.
• Collaborates with your video conference apps like Zoom, Bluejeans, etc, to create a smart meeting infrastructure.
• Keeps everyone in the loop — Automatically creates a concise summary and delivers it to you as a fully-editable document that you can share across teams.
• Helps you find exactly what you’re looking for in your post-meeting recordings using keyword search that scours not just one, but all your meeting recordings.

The future of remote meetings appears to be promising, as holding virtual reality sessions continue to achieve robust, almost real-life experiences among participants.

Still confused about how to use a meeting assistant? Try using our free AI-personal meeting assistant and make your meetings more actionable and productive.