Why Your Remote Meetings Aren't Working (And How To Improve Them)

Remote meetings can be tough to get right. When people are flung across the planet in different time zones and aren’t in the same room as each other, coordination becomes annoyingly difficult.

Fortunately, there are things you can do about this. Even if remote meetings aren’t working for you now, you can quickly turn the situation around.

This post looks through some of the problems you might be having with remote meetings first and then runs through a list of solutions you could try to implement. By the end of reading this short article, you should find yourself in a much better position.

Why Your Remote Meetings Aren’t Working

Here are some reasons why your remote meetings might be falling short.

You’re In Time Zone Hell

Scheduling meetings across continents is always hard because people are getting up and going to bed at different times. These problems are bad enough when trying to work with colleagues in Europe and North America, but get so much worse when Australia and the Far East get involved.

Your Agenda Is Overloaded

At the same time, you will often run into trouble if your agenda becomes overloaded. There’s just too much to get through in one call, you often wind up organising further meetings or over-running.

Your Meeting Lacks Purpose

Lack of purpose for remote team meetings can also be a problem. It’s often worth considering whether you even need to set something up or if things will continue humming along without any intervention.

You Have Too Many People

Finally, remote meetings can get into trouble if there are too many people on the call without sufficient focus.

How To Improve Your Meetings

So, what can you do to improve your remote meetings?

It’s all rather simple.

Set A Sharp Objective

Ensure that everyone knows what the purpose of the meeting is before they sit down in front of their computers to join in. They should come prepared to protect their time and ensure they rattle through all the points on the list.

Test Tech First

Next, it’s a good idea to test all the tech first. Adopting meeting and team collaboration software can help keep things on topic and direct meetings so they cover things that your company cares about.

Make It Interactive

At the same time, you can make the meeting more interactive by adding Q&As or breakout periods to keep people engaged. Calling on quiet people can draw them in and get them to contribute, even if they would stay silent otherwise. Using AI meeting assistants can help facilitate participation by automatically capturing key points and action items, so everyone stays focused on the discussion rather than note-taking.

Keep It Lean

Also, don’t feel like you need to invite everyone in the company to join in. Just a handful of relevant people are often all you need unless there’s a pressing requirement to bring the entire team together (something you can do on team building days elsewhere if you want).

Keep looking at your remote meetings and ask what you can do better. Explore your software options and try to find ways to give staff more of the experiences they want.