Before Conducting Virtual Business Meetings Consider These 7 Essentials

Today, most businesses embrace video or audio conferences instead of earlier days where face-to-face meetings were the norm. These conferences, also known as virtual meetings, bring people together regardless of the distance, weather, or pandemics. And with the coronavirus still on the rise, this technology couldn’t have come at a better time.

For all your business meetings and video conferencing solution, find out such a setting for the staff, both in the office and those working from home gets an enhanced meeting experience. The design must give you the best support and peace of mind you so much desire.

Also, note that the secret to a successful virtual meeting is good planning. If you plan it well, it can beat all the geographical barriers to ensure the continuity of your business and maintain good working relationships. Planning a virtual meeting is quite a task, but with these 7 things put into consideration, you can surely make it happen without a hitch.

1. What is the agenda of your meeting?

Before calling for a virtual meeting, ensure you have a clear agenda and communicate it well across all members to avoid confusion and time wastage. You need to make it easy for everyone involved, prepare a formal agenda, and point out the key subjects you want them to discuss. Also, assign each member their role during the meeting. The reason is to have a well-planned and orderly meeting throughout.

2. Consider keeping your members in the know

You need to formally invite the members to the virtual meeting a week before the actual date. In the invitation, give them the agenda and the areas of concern so they can prepare early. You can also set and send a reminder to their emails, so no one has an excuse for not showing up during the session. Don’t forget to include the date and time for the virtual meeting in the invitation email or text.

3. How about the virtual meeting rules?

You do not want a meeting where everyone talks in an unorderly manner. A successful virtual meeting should follow the same rules as a face-to-face meeting and other set video rules. These include;

 •          You must attend unless you communicated earlier

 •          Read the meeting agenda and understand it well

 •          Minimize background noises

 •          You shouldn’t be walking all around the room,

 •          Don’t take calls or be on the phone when still on the session

 •          Don’t sign out before the meeting ends, etc.

After everyone has acknowledged the receipt of the virtual meeting invitations, send them these rules and ensure they all agree to them to avoid issues on the meeting day.

Have a good internet connection

This is an important one. If you’re going to be conducting a virtual meeting, make sure that everyone involved has a good internet connection. There’s nothing worse than trying to have a productive conversation when everyone keeps getting dropped or the audio is choppy.

When your connection drops, it looks like you’re not paying attention. It also makes it difficult to hear what others are saying and can be frustrating for everyone involved. Make sure that you have a strong connection before getting on a call.

A stable internet connection will make for a much smoother meeting. Find

internet providers by address to ensure that everyone will be able to participate without any issues.

4. Consider having a virtual meeting moderator

In any meeting, whether face-to-face or virtual, a moderator’s work is to keep members in order. This is someone who will have all the authority to control the meeting proceedings. The moderator has to permit you to speak and keep everyone talking only about the topic.

The need for a virtual meeting moderator is high, especially with the uncertainties that come with the network connectivity. Poor network connectivity can cause miscommunication and poor video or audio quality.

5. Time limits

You don’t want to annoy your members by extended time limits, as they may start moving their bodies inappropriately or not concentrate fully on what someone is saying. A good way to achieve your scheduled time is to overbudget it. Say like you plan to conduct a 30-minute virtual meeting; in that case, you can schedule an hour in your calendar so if you finish in 50 minutes or so, everyone will be satisfied and not complain.

Still on time limits, please ensure that every speaker in your virtual meeting speaks for a certain amount of time, communicate that they can’t extend this time as you intend to allow everyone to give their opinion without bias.

6. Allow different ways of joining a virtual meeting

You can’t restrict a virtual meeting to computers only as they are prone to several technical or system issues. Besides, not everyone has access to computers even though most people are now working from home. Allow your members to join the meeting using mobile devices like smartphones and tablets if they can’t access computers as long as they’ll be audible and have clear pictures.

7. What video conferencing tool to use

Besides internet connection, you must consider the video conferencing tools to use in your virtual meeting. There are various software solutions for your video conferencing to choose from. Provide a link to this tool. Just pick one technology to use to avoid complicating matters. Also, ensure all members, especially the management team, know how to use this software tool.