According to new InterCall research on workplace conference call behavior, 82 percent of employees admitted to focusing on other work or non-work distractions while on a call. Rob Bellmar, executive vice president of conferencing and collaboration at InterCall, recently offered some great tips to Harvard Business Review about ending conference call abuse. Here are his highlights.
Stop striving for inclusiveness
Online calendars, scheduling apps and email distribution lists have created a monstrous meeting invite reflex. It has become too easy to send blanket, one-hour meeting invites to 10 people when only five are relevant to the agenda.
Businesses need to break free of the notion that all attendees should be on a conference call from start to finish. Rob advises that managers can stagger invitations and plan upfront which topics will be discussed at various points in the meeting.
Start using video
Video conferencing remains a point of contention, and its adoption curve is a matter of psychological acceptance. The idea that everyone in a meeting can watch what you’re doing deters many workers, as does the dissonance between what we see in the mirror and what’s reflected on our laptop or tablet screens.
But Rob cites research from Wainhouse, which found that of the employees who use webcams and similar tools during meetings, 74 percent like the ability to see colleagues’ reactions to their ideas, and nearly 70 percent feel it increases connectedness between participants.
For more con call tips, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.
This is an amazing post! I agree with everything that is in here. Half the time I put my conference line on mute, while I work on other more important/necessary tasks because I wasn't really needed on the conference line to begin with. I get the feeling that the more people there are on the conference line, the more likely people are to not be paying attention and the dialogue gets scattered more quickly
Posted by: Kathy | July 21, 2015 at 04:47 AM