The quality of remote meetings is a matter worth paying attention to.
“Work engagement decreases if there are too many meetings,” says Assistant Professor Virpi-Liisa Kykyri with the University of Jyväskylä's Department of Psychology.
“If you have two remote meetings back-to-back, you may not even have the break that would normally be there for getting from one meeting room to another. Fatigue is caused not only by the flood of information, but also the missing information deficit from not necessarily being able to see the other participants' expressions and gestures, or seeing them with a delay.”
Kykyri served as the lead for a study on the strain caused by remote meetings. The study was conducted by the Universities of Jyväskylä and Oulu and was completed in the autumn of 2023. The Oulu research group was led by assistant professor Xiaobai Li. The study was financed by the Finnish Work Environment Fund, and its purpose was to produce new data for the development of interaction and usefulness of meetings, as well as develop new technology to assess the physiological arousal of participants.
Leaders also have an impact
The project examined the functionality and effects of remote meetings from the perspectives of the meeting participants and leaders.
The study showed that when a participant speaks and actively participates in the meeting with their expressions, gestures and motions, they will also consider the meeting to have been more useful than a passive participant.
Similarly, the longer a participant stays quiet and does not nonverbally express their participation, the less useful they will find the meeting.
New tools are also needed for interpreting situations, as subtle changes in atmosphere are more difficult to convey in remote meetings than face-to-face meetings. In remote meetings, people have access to less information for sensing the atmosphere.
“When conveying the meaning of gestures, a delay of mere fractions of a second can have an impact. Therefore, the meetings require more explicit verbal communication. This creates more work for the leader of the meeting. As such, remote meetings can cause challenges and stress not just for the participants, but also the meeting leaders.”
Kykyri notes that a leader of a remote meeting needs to have skills that are not always necessary in face-to-face contact. Guiding the discussion, good pacing, reading the participants and inviting people to participate are even more important than usual.
Before the start of a remote meeting, a meeting leader should ensure that all the requirements for focusing on the meeting are fulfilled. Adjusting and explicitly verbalising elements of the situation requires more work from the leader than with a traditional meeting.
For participants, the risks presented include overarousal, underarousal, boredom and even sleepiness. It is easy to lose focus when modern technology ensures that other worlds are always within reach, just one click away.
A break before a meeting is helpful
The study also investigated how breaks impact the success of remote meetings.
“We held a short relaxation break before the meeting. The results were quite positive. We noticed that even a break of two minutes where you close your eyes and relax can help calm down the physiological state of participants. Many participants said that a shared moment of relaxation was particularly useful, and matters such as concentration were noticeably easier after the relaxation. The break didn't even need to be long or particularly organised,” says Kykyri.
More attention should be paid to emotions in the interactions of work life, and meeting practices should be developed so that meeting leaders would be able to combine and utilise the best features of various meeting formats.
“Face-to-face meetings naturally have shared rules and structures that prevent distractions, while those structures need to be separately created for remote meetings. The goal is to allow appropriately active concentration for all participants,” says Kykyri in summary.
Machine vision algorithms will soon analyse arousal
The project developed a method to allow participants' heart rate to be measured without a contact device from changes in facial skin colouration. The blood flow affected by a person's heart rate causes slight changes in the colouration of their face, which an advanced machine vision algorithm can detect, even if they may not be visible to the naked eye.
The detection of the changes in colouration did not require special equipment or arrangements, as good results could be achieved with an ordinary integrated webcam and in varying conditions.
“In the future, this solution will enable the provision of real-time feedback to participants regarding changes in their heart rate during meetings. Within about two years, we can expect to see applications for measuring changes in arousal in remote contexts that will even be suitable for consumer use,” says Kykyri.
Four tips for leaders of remote meetings
Ensure requirements for focusing. Physiologically preparing to focus should start before the meeting. If you are already stressed out, your experience of the meeting and its usefulness may be poor. There should be breaks between meetings to allow for recovery and relaxation. In a particularly stressful situation, it is worth considering if the meeting should be cancelled or postponed.
Make focusing as easy as possible. To support participants' undivided attention, you can arrange a short relaxation break, or reserve a moment for informal chatting at the start of the meeting. Advise participants to turn on their cameras and make sure everyone can see each other, if participation is important. You can ask participants to close all other windows and applications.
Invite participation. Encourage participants to speak up and express their thoughts. The more you talk yourself, the less space it leaves for others. Even if the primary purpose of the meeting is to share information, passivity may be detrimental. Invite participants to listen and comment on what they hear.
Monitor the group's activation. Monitoring participants' activation is more difficult in large meetings, but can still be possible by asking questions or asking participants to use meeting reactions. Change between different working methods and arrange more breaks in remote meetings than you would in face-to-face meetings.
Source: Virpi-Liisa Kykyri