How to beat ‘Zoom Fatigue’
2-minute read
It’s 3pm and Susan is about to go on her fifth video conference call of the day with her colleagues. Like many of her co-workers, she recognises that the calls are important, but finds the number of them disrupts the ability to get a flow to her workday and leaves her feeling drained by close of business. Why is that?
What is ‘Zoom Fatigue’?
The cause of this is a studied phenomenon called ‘Zoom Fatigue’ relating to the inherent deficiencies of video call technology. Tiny delays in verbal responses from other people on a call disproportionately affect our interpersonal perceptions, even without any internet or technical issues. It creates the sense that the rest of the group are not engaged and/or unfriendly.
With many webcams set up to focus on a narrow view of a person’s head and shoulders, many of the subtle non-verbal communication clues that people are hard-wired to detect are missing, forcing extra effort to concentrate almost solely on the words spoken.
Additionally, the constant spotlight shone on everyone taking part in a call means that there is an unnatural need to try and focus on multiple different people at the same time, which does not happen in group meetings held in-person.
This prolonged split in attention creates a puzzling sense of being drained while having accomplished nothing. The brain becomes overwhelmed by unfamiliar excess stimuli while being hyper-focused on searching for non-verbal cues that it can’t find.
Tips
Some simple changes that can make a big difference to conference calls:
Ask staff to schedule shorter video calls. 25-minute or 55-minute meetings instead of the usual half an hour and hour-long ones, allow time for people to get up and move around – especially important if there are back-to-back meetings organised.
Request that the mute function be used the moment someone is no longer speaking. Background noise causes other people’s attention to be diverted from the speaker and is mentally taxing.
Ask for people to use the very simple or slightly blurred backgrounds that video call software has. The visual stimuli of several different rooms is also distracting and again causes fatigue.
Resort to simple phone calls or have video turned off for everyone. It’s a relatively low-tech solution that doesn’t create the same high expectations that an in-person meeting inherently does and a video call tries to replicate.
Is the video call necessary? The potential for information overload from a video call could be avoided with an email and shared files (with clear notes) and be a more productive method to achieving the end result.
All of these suggestions will have an effect on improving the working environment when it comes to employee interaction.
You can read our article on how working from home affects employees here.
Habitus specialises in providing practical, lasting solutions to mental health issues. For more information on how Habitus can help your organisation develop comprehensive support for your employees, click here. Alternatively, send us a message by clicking here or contact us by phone on 020 7207 3186.