An Effective Guide to Remote Team Meetings

When it comes to a virtual meeting, there are many things that can go wrong besides thinking you shouldn’t be a part of it: Your internet could fail, you have so many things open in your computer that it’s running slow, your dogs decide to bark non-stop, or your child throws a massive tantrum. Remote employees already have to face a lot of challenges just to carry on with their jobs as normally as possible, adding unnecessary or wearisome meetings on top of that can impact negatively decreasing morale and productivity.

Meetings are supposed to be a useful tool to help an organization run smoothly, not a part of the job that creates more stress, so it is crucial that leaders know how to handle remote team meetings and make them as effective as possible. 

How to Run a Remote Team Meeting?

• Show Up Prepared

This is standard for every meeting, not just a remote meeting. It’s important to have a meeting agenda with strategic bullet points, keynotes, or even flowcharts, to know exactly what you want to discuss, what you want to ask, and bring important updates or information so that the meeting can run as planned. 

The more efficient you can make a meeting, the better. Using a performance management tool will help you track your team’s performance so that you can use your meeting time effectively to only discuss blockers and relevant situations instead of spending a good part of the meeting in the “how was your week” intro. By constantly reviewing your team’s dashboard, you’ll be able to prepare better for each virtual meeting and focus on tackling potential threats, deep dive in what’s taking longer than expected and leave everyone with a sense of satisfaction from a successful and productive meeting.

• Have a Consistent Meeting Schedule

Try to avoid impromptu meetings and stick to a regular schedule. Calling for a sudden meeting can interrupt an employee’s concentration and their regular day flow. Agree with your remote team on a certain schedule and make your best not to move or cancel it. With remote teams, is important to keep in mind their time zones and agree on a time that’s convenient for everyone.

Having a consistent schedule would not just provide a sense of security to your remote employees but will allow everyone to show up prepared, and you already know how important that is. 

• Be Conscious not to Speak Over Your Employees

With a virtual meeting is difficult to notice when someone’s about to speak, so talking simultaneously with someone else happens a lot. To avoid this from happening is important to literally take the lead in the conversation and set guidelines that will allow everyone to speak their minds peacefully and with as little disruption as possible.

How to Bring a Team Together Virtually?

One of the main challenges with remote team members is having them connect with each other. In an office setting, it’s easier to have team building activities that help employees bond. 

Obviously, there’s nothing like physical meetups to bond and boost employee and workplace morale, but we know sometimes it’s extremely difficult to organize an event for everyone to meet if you have people working from different parts of the world. So, virtual team building tools are your best option to increase employee morale. Furthermore, incorporating emojis into virtual team communication can enhance employee engagement and boost morale. They can convey emotions, signal agreement or disagreement, highlight key points, and even be personalized. Using customizable emojis can also prevent meetings from becoming monotonous and uplift employee spirits. 

Virtual team meetings ideas could include games like “2 truths and a lie”, “Pictionary” or “Charades” if your team is still not very familiar with each other, chances are they’re not going to enjoy that much to play because they don’t feel confident enough with the rest of the team, so maybe start with virtual shared coffee breaks and encourage employees to ask questions about other team members to know more about their interests and backgrounds. Once they get to know each other, organizing a virtual team building event will be easy and something they look forward to. Spending fun times with your employees is a great way to boost positive employee morale and it increases employee engagement rapidly.

If you take the time to strategically organize team building activities for your virtual team you can not just have them bonding, but help them improve their communication skills and alleviate the challenges of being a remote workforce. Why, you ask?

• If your remote team members feel lonely or that they lack support, virtual team building activities act as a reminder of all the great people that have their back.
• If your remote employee wants to be a little bit more independent, a virtual activity can help them prove why they can be more autonomous and gain the trust of their leaders.
• If your remote employee is feeling unmotivated, a virtual team building activity can help lighten the spark again and remind them why they joined the company in the first place.

Supporting your team members is extremely important when it comes to remote teams. We hope this guide to effective remote team meetings helps you increase productivity, performance, and project management. Don’t be afraid to try new things! Remember that Einstein said that it’s crazy to expect different results by doing the exact same things.