Virtual meetings are here to stay
After many months of meetings over Zoom, 58% think they will have about the same amount or more virtual meetings 6 months from now. Knowing that the digital meeting experience isn’t ending anytime soon, it’s all that more important to optimize the experience for attendees and those running the meetings alike. In fact, for 70% of workers, gathering input from meeting attendees sounds like it would make meetings better where they work and yet only 54% of workers say they’ve ever been asked for feedback about meetings they regularly attend.
- 32% of people find themselves thinking, “this meeting could have been an email” all or most of the time.
- 65% think the onus is on both the attendees and the person leading the meeting to make sure the meeting is productive
- Only 56% come away from meetings with clear action items all or most of the time
Biggest issues with virtual meetings compared to in-person meetings are mainly centered around relatable issues and translate across industries.
- Technology issues (e.g. internet connectivity issues), (41% overall)
- Getting all attendees sorted on how best to use the technology (e.g. how to mute, use the camera), (31% overall) and,
- Virtual meeting etiquette (e.g. Attendees not focused/multi-tasking) or lack of engagement (27%)
The Key to Better Meetings
More than half of workers say their meetings could be improved with two simple fixes: “having an agenda” (54%) and “keeping meetings short” (53%).
- At big companies, meeting length is a particular pain point: 63% of workers at companies with 5,000 or more workers point to “keeping meetings short” as a way to improve meeting quality.
- Workers at smaller organizations are more likely to favor a more interactive meeting experience: 37% of workers at organizations with fewer than 50 employees say “making the experience more interactive” would improve meetings, compared with 30% among those at companies with 5000 or more people.
- By job level, execs are more likely to want meetings to be interactive (36%) and ensure everyone has time to share (28%) compared to more junior roles (32% and 16%, respectively).
Fully 67% of workers find that it would be extremely or very useful to gather feedback from employees to help shape what meetings should be like in a post-COVID world.
- Recognition of the power of gathering feedback translates across all levels of the organization: 70% among entry level and middle managers and 69% among execs find it useful.
- Younger people are more likely to find feedback extremely useful before meetings.
Read more about our polling methodology here.
Click through all the results in the interactive toplines below:
