How To Keep Your Team Engaged During Virtual Meetings

 

Almost all businesses have utilized virtual meetings in some capacity over the past few years. And this flexible form of communication is not going away anytime soon. Whether a company has a hybrid model, is completely remote, or has employees back in the office, video conference platforms are still used to keep everyone connected. 

Unfortunately, 55% of workers describe the virtual meetings they attend as dull. Yikes! So, what are you doing to spice things up and keep your virtual meeting participants engaged?

Let’s discuss the steps you can take to keep productivity up, your team engaged, and your virtual meeting more interactive.

Keep Things Concise

Researchers in the UK have found that the perfect meeting length does exist! Employee focus in virtual meetings lasts about 30 minutes, with 45 minutes being the maximum amount of time most employees can handle being in a meeting. 

The best practice for running a productive and efficient meeting is to set an agenda where key points and deliverables are outlined for discussion. You can send these agendas out with your meeting invites so everyone can know what to expect. 

During your meeting, be sure to watch the clock. This seems obvious, but as we have all probably experienced, sometimes discussions really take off, and time flies, causing the meeting to last longer than expected. Going over on time is okay sometimes, but it should not be done often, as it can be a sign of disrespect to your employees. As we all know, time is valuable, including your employees’ time.

Incorporate Visuals

The virtual world is visual! And visuals keep everyone engaged! Let’s be honest, no matter how much we treasure our team members, sometimes it’s nice to look at a visual aid rather than their face while they’re presenting recent findings to the group. 

Fortunately, Clear.Live offers a screen-sharing tool for virtual meeting use. That way, you can share documents and reference image assets during team discussions. You can also use Clear.Live’s whiteboard tool to show off your visual aids. Clear.Live’s whiteboard tool is unlike most video conferencing platforms, Clear.Live’s virtual meetings start with the whiteboard board open in the middle of the virtual meeting space. Hosts have the option to use the preset whiteboard slides, or they can also upload their own slides to use.

Keep It Interactive

There are many exciting and fun things you can do to amp up team engagement, and the key to this is to incorporate some sort of interactivity into your virtual meetings!  Try utilizing icebreaker games or team-building activities to get everyone talking at the start of a meeting. This is an excellent opportunity to create bonds between coworkers and cement company culture.

You can also check out your video conference platform’s many robust features to spice up your virtual meeting. Besides the screen-share and whiteboard features, Clear.Live also offers many other collaborative tools to keep virtual meetings interactive, like polling, raising hands, emojis, shared notes, and breakout rooms.

Polling Feature

This polling tool allows meeting hosts to post questions to virtual meeting participants and display those poll results in real-time! 

Raise Hand 

This feature allows users to raise their hands virtually to let the host and other attendees know they would like to contribute to the meeting. It’s a great way to cut out interruptions.

Emojis 

Clear.Live lets attendees display an emoji to express an emotion or idea quickly during a meeting.

Shared Notes

This tool is a collaborative text area to the left of the whiteboard or shared-screen area in the virtual meeting space. It allows everyone to contribute thoughts and information by text.

Breakout Rooms 

These rooms allow for isolated meeting sessions that split from the primary group setting. These breakout rooms enable attendees to meet in a smaller capacity with colleagues, completely isolated in terms of audio and video from the main session.

Clear.Live has reimagined web conferencing! We provide companies across every business with the necessary tools for clear communication and collaboration with various robust features. Take your company’s virtual meetings to the next level. Start your free trial today.