Hybrid meetings & Digital Etiquette | Origameo Podcast #5

We know about different types of meetings in organisations.

Company meetings are not just black and white. Whether we are talking about the meeting’s size (from one-to-one to big workshops and value creation processes), the meeting’s purpose (information meetings, coordination meetings, development, feedback,…) or the meeting’s form (online, in person, hybrid), we always need them to be as efficient as possible.

“Any of these combinations of meetings can also have different proportions of people online and in person. So before organising any type of meeting, I would first look at when we should encourage in-person meetings and when remote or hybrid might be just as good,” says Iva Kleinová, our former head of research. So, these are a few hints for you from an expert to help you make the right decision.

Which meetings should be in person and which ones online?

Some meetings are better to hold in person than online. We should always look at what the purpose of the meeting is and then choose the form we can utilise as much as possible. If the meeting you’re planning should have high emotions, feedback, co-creation or low-trust situations, you should go for an in-person meeting. On the other hand, when you trust your colleagues, the meeting is purely informational or the meeting coordinator is known for their great online meeting management skills, you should opt for an online meeting.

Tips for Hybrid Meetings in a Hybrid Workspace

Hybrid meetings are not the same as in-person meetings. Therefore, we’d like to offer you some tips to improve your hybrid meetings.

• Use simple codes in your invitations for meetings – like adding the word [office] at the beginning of the subject line.
• Add links for online participation to every single meeting.
• Positively discriminate online people.

Use positive discrimination when doing hybrid meetings

When it comes to any hybrid meeting, our workspace consultants found out that people participating in meetings in person are “louder”, which often means that people participating online are left out. Therefore, we have prepared some tips so people online can be as efficient as people participating in person:

• During the meeting, everyone should turn on their computer and camera so they can see everyone’s face. Or at the very minimum, no one should be positioned outside of the camera’s view.
• Use a virtual whiteboard so anything that’s written during the meeting is immediately visible for everyone.
• Schedule time for informal chats like those you would have in front of a meeting room.
• Schedule meetings that are not a full hour so everyone can take a break before the next one.
• All the participants, but especially the meeting host, should always regularly ask the remote colleagues for their opinions or encourage them to speak first.

If you are interested in hybrid workspace experience and the possible headaches it can cause, check out our #masterhybridwork series article about professional isolation and how to solve it: Don’t let hybrid working mean isolated working – HB Reavis.

If you would like to learn more about best practices and examples of people relations in a hybrid workspace, tune into our 4th podcast!

At Origameo, we use our technical expertise and years of experience to design offices that fuel productivity, enhance company culture and help employers reach their goals. We redevelop offices as often as we design completely new workspaces. But in every case, we adapt everything to their people’s needs – and that usually means embracing hybrid working.