By Yoyo Rita
Do you remember the days of old—pre-2020, when virtual meetings were not the assumed norm? When remote working tools like Teams and Slack were often used, but not considered essential to daily business functions? Indeed, as in most industries post-2020, remote work has transformed our daily activities in workplace investigations. This new virtual paradigm has created many new or modified professional norms. Here, I have compiled a use of remote etiquette tips to help you navigate this digital world:
- Keep your video-meeting software updated! Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet release frequent updates, which can delay you if you are jumping onto a meeting at the last minute and forced to do an unexpected software update. Try checking your video-meeting software for updates (and computer operating system too, for that matter) at least once a month to ensure you won’t be unexpectedly slowed down before attempting to join a virtual meeting.
- Activate your audio and video. This is a basic sign of respect and consideration of the other participants in a virtual meeting. Of course, if you need to temporarily deactivate your video and/or audio, as I often do in my capacity as an Analyst, always clarify that you are going to do so. If advising the participants of this would interrupt the meeting, make use of the chat. Which leads me to my next point:
- Use the video conference chat wisely. The chat is a great forum to send quick links, advise participants of updates, and the like, but it is less helpful as a means of complex communication. Try to keep unnecessary chatter in the chat to a minimum.
- Keep meetings on task and on time. A good rule of thumb is to schedule virtual meetings for 15 minutes longer than you anticipate the meeting actually lasting, so as not to be inadvertently pushed behind schedule. Before scheduling a meeting, make a quick mental or written outline of th aim of a meeting. This will help you estimate how much time is actually needed. Once in the meeting, use this outline as a guide, while allowing for new topics to come up as needed. Save personal check-ins and other discussions until the end of the meeting.
- Update your calendar! Many automated shared calendar tools abound, but I personally take full advantage of Microsoft Outlook’s Calendar. It allows you to share your calendar with team members, cross check team member availability, and schedule meetings. Of course, you should get into the habit of inserting your personal activities or project-specific work times into the calendar, so your team members are aware of your availability. To protect personal details, you can hide event details in settings, so that team members can only see the essential information about your availability.
- Use IM chat threads for daily updates. Tools like Teams and Slack are great methods of maintaining quick communications with team members, direct reports, and supervisors. They can also help cut down on an unnecessary volume of back-and-forth email communications. Try to avoid sharing any confidential information through these chats.
Though not an exhaustive list, these basic rules serve as groundwork for establishing an efficient remote workflow. After all, remote work requires the same professionalism and good practices as in-person work does.
Do you have any other remote working etiquette tips you live by in our virtual world?