It's been four years since the world came to a sudden halt, and some things are not what they used to be.
Office meetings are one example of this. Virtual meetings are super convenient, but they can also feel never-ending. They can be boring and overwhelming. There are long wait times for everyone to show up, and the anxiety of “Can everyone see my screen?”
There are e-meetings that should have been communicated by email, e-meetings that should have been communicated by text, and pre-scheduled weekly meetings that shouldn't have existed in the first place. Is there a way to do this right?
First, the problem
Since the global adoption of Zoom, Teams, and the like in 2020, it's become a widely-accepted opinion that we all have too many meetings scheduled on our calendars. Crowded schedules lead to overlapping items and key people being “missed” and rushing into different virtual meeting rooms.
Background noise, dropped connections and other technological glitches increase stress, said a global survey published in 2022 by technology market research firm Dimensional Research, which included participants at various job levels across small, medium and large companies in Asia, Europe, Africa, North America and Australia/New Zealand.
The report adds that these hassles have been exacerbated since the pandemic, with most hybrid workers (60% of respondents) saying they spend at least two hours per day on video conferences.
Now, what is the impact?
Amid the noise and chaos, numerous studies have found that virtual meetings are associated with two seemingly contradictory emotions: boredom and fatigue.
In a study titled “Virtual Meeting Fatigue,” published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology in October, researchers from Aalto University in Finland and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health fitted monitors to 44 knowledge workers across 400 meetings, tracking exactly how the human mind and body reacted by monitoring their heart rates during both virtual and in-person meetings.
They found signs of virtual meeting fatigue, characterized by feelings of extreme tiredness. The researchers also found that many people experienced drowsiness, likely the result of mental “underloading” and boredom.
“Research suggests that (virtual meeting) fatigue may result from increased cognitive demands when individuals have to constantly pay attention to a screen and keep themselves well-groomed,” Nina Nurmi, assistant professor of organizational design and leadership at Aalto University, said in the study.
Meanwhile, when the cameras are turned off, participants who aren't directly involved feel bored. Over time, they typically respond by multitasking, the study found.
While some stimulation is beneficial for the brain during face-to-face or on-camera meetings, this kind of “forced multitasking” during off-camera meetings can eventually lead to stress and fatigue.
The solution to the problem of “Zoom fatigue” is to encourage employees to meet in person and limit the number of meetings they attend, the paper says. In-person meetings offer flexible conversation flows and a wealth of social and non-verbal cues that “may keep participants engaged and more active.”
Could more technology help?
At this point, the question inevitably arises as to whether artificial intelligence can also provide effective solutions. As with most things regarding AI at this point, the answer is “maybe.”
Zoom's AI Companion, introduced late last year, summarizes meetings in multiple languages and provides highlights for those who dozed off, multitasked, or simply had the usual brain freeze that's common at such events. (The AI Companion is available to paid users.) ₹1,100 per month for the Pro subscription.
When it comes to the fundamental issue of cross-platform quality of experience, Google is working with its new Gemini AI model to reduce ambient noise, improve audio and image clarity, and moderate lighting during Meet calls. Microsoft's AI is looking at ways to improve voice separation, background rendering, and speaker recognition in the Teams app. (No, you're not alone. It's often nearly impossible to tell who's talking.)
Microsoft's big bet is the Copilot assistant, which will help Teams 2024 offer 3D environments, meeting transcription and summaries, and collaborative notes for all participants on a call.
Interestingly, there is no talk yet of AI assistants taking over for users and joining virtual meetings or attending on our behalf, but that is the dream: a future in which we can ask, “Hey, how was your day?” and the response is, “I have no idea, let me check my summary notes.”
