Good practice for virtual meetings
A few simple steps can help your meetings run better, especially if you are using virtual meetings with clients who are not used to them.
If you haven’t conducted a virtual meeting with a client before:
- Ask if they engage in virtual meetings regularly
- Check if they are used to using the particular software package you are using
- Offer to run through the key controls and functions that are available
- Check that they understand and are happy that you will record the meeting
- Consider scheduling your meeting to start 10 minutes before or after the hour/half hour
- Allocate 50 minutes for one-hour meetings and 25 for 30 minutes to give yourself time to make any notes immediately after in case you have back-to-back sessions
If you are running a large meeting
Here are a few quick tips which can be useful if you are running a larger virtual meeting:
- Join a few minutes ahead of the start time
- Allow time for introductions or re-establishing relationships (it is like the social chat at the start of a physical meeting)
- Mute your microphone when not talking
- Try to avoid talking over / at the same time as other participants
- Ask everyone to turn their video on unless you have a poor connection, this will stop people being distracted and multi-tasking
- Be aware you are on camera
- If there is a raise your hand function in the system use it so the meeting organiser can manage things effectively
- Use the chat function to let people know if you can’t hear them, to pose questions or to directly contact individual participants
