Forced dependency on video meetings has plusses, minuses

Our friend Bob is a client services manager for an investment firm. Pre-COVID-19, he made five calls a day, driving about 75 miles to visit clients in their offices. He’d stop two or three times at Starbucks in between calls.

Post-COVID-19, he is calling seven clients per day via Zoom. He’s sleeping better because he’s dropped the four or five coffees. By not driving, he’s saving gas and is less stressed and he has time to jog every day.

Bob’s happy.

We have another friend Amy who is owner and chief executive of a regional insurance broker with around 75 employees. Amy is a self-described hands-on manager. She enjoys one-one interactions with her team and managing by walking around the office.

She worries that some employees aren’t as productive working from home and that she may lose customers as a result. Zoom meetings just don’t do it for her. She’s stressed out.

Some might say that this is an Amy problem, not a Zoom problem. But our forced dependency on managing via video meetings clearly has plusses and minuses.

On the plus side, many white-collar employees have been able to keep their mental health, their self-respect and their jobs as a result of being able to work remotely.

We can see bluer skies and clearer horizons as airline and automobile use and carbon emissions have plummeted.

We know that many households are happier, with parents reconnecting with their relatives and children, helping them with homework and playing in the yard. Single parents no longer have to struggle as much to find daycare.

Meeting productivity has improved, especially if there’s a good chairperson guiding the flow. Daily morning team meetings that are highly collaborative can improve employee engagement.

Agendas are likely to be set in advance, attendees are better-prepared and can raise their hands in an orderly fashion. Minority attendees, intimidated by the face-to-face boardroom, can find their voices; Zoom gives no advantage to the tallest person to dominate the conversation.

But there are downsides. How do you virtually put your arm around someone you care about but have to lay off? How do you have the tough conversation? How do you strike a deal with strangers when you can’t see the non-verbal body language in the room? How do you find out what your coworkers are really thinking when you can’t bump into them informally at the water cooler?

Of course, every technology has its limitations, but there are coping mechanisms that we can develop to control for Zoom fatigue.

Setting up a mini-office separate from where the children are doing their online learning, increasing the bandwidth to accommodate multiple internet users in the same household, limiting online videoconferencing (and consequent eye strain) to five or six hours a day with stretch breaks in between, to name a few.

Gradually, co-workers start to feel more comfortable, becoming less formal, sharing a joke or two, especially during virtual happy hours.

Overall, the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the shift to telecommuting. In doing so, it’s shown that Zoom is good for public health.

It has allowed many white-collar workers to show that they can be productive without being policed every day in the office.

Working remotely frees up time from commuting to enable people to contribute to the vitality of their communities. By reducing transportation use, traffic congestion and pollution, Zoom is saving lives.

Most important, Zoom has allowed major segments of the economy to continue to function in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, and we know economic health is good for public health.