Member Article

Turbo-charge your virtual meetings with these easy steps

Have you ever been on a conference call with someone outside of your office? If you have not, then you are in the minority. According to new research, near four fifths of people regularly work with someone outside of the office. Our meetings are changing, and having a phone or video meeting with someone in a different city or even a different country is rapidly becoming the new normal.

But virtual meetings can be vexing if you do not get them right. Whether it is technical hiccups or agenda issues, there are numerous ways your meetings can get tied up in knots - no-one wants to have to reschedule because they cannot figure out how to share their presentation. And when you are busy, there is nothing worse than being stuck in an unproductive meeting, waiting for someone to get the right document up.

Luckily, it is easy to unhitch any glitches. Here are some straightforward steps you can take to get your meetings straightened out and take your productivity to the max:

Know what you need to achieve.

Have a clear agenda with set objectives, know who needs to attend and what needs to be done afterwards. Good meeting practice applies just as much to virtual meetings, and sometimes even more; if your team is working across different time zones, you might have limited opportunities to speak face-to-face on video, so make your meetings work for you and prepare well.

Make sharing easy.

If information or documents needs to be shared, make sure they are readily available so that time is not wasted searching for them. Once you have all your documents ready, make sure you have reliable software to make sharing a breeze - nothing stumps a productive meeting like a technical malfunction. Purpose-built solutions enable seamless, wireless content-sharing anywhere in the world. With no cables to untangle, you can share your slides, screen or even live video hassle-free.

Choose a quiet location for a distraction-free meeting.

Nothing interferes with a meeting (particularly a virtual meeting) more than background noise and distractions, whether that is roadworks outside your window or a barking dog. If you can’t choose a quiet location, invest in technology that can block out external noise - Acoustic Fence technology automatically cuts out background noise beyond a certain distance, so that car alarm outside won’t make it into your call.

Use the right tools for the job.

With the right preparation, you can easily sidestep the biggest issues, but don’t underestimate the power of technology to foster trouble-free collaboration. After all, over three fifths of people said their concerns about remote working would be eased if they had easy-to-use technology. As more and more teams are spread across the world, supporting them is paramount; enterprise-grade technology with content annotation, live-streaming and even session recording means you can defy distance and boost your meeting productivity, wherever you are.

So, ready to take on your next meeting? If you stick to this guide, you can bypass troublesome wires and planning pitfalls to make efficient collaboration a cinch.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Polycom .