Could Covid-19 Video-conferencing Boom Lead to Productivity Fall?

Video-conferencing Overdrive Could Lead to Plummet in Productivity

As Covid-19 sweeps across the planet, businesses are pivoting to virtual meetings at the cost of productivity. Video-calling gives the illusion of collaboration, but Wundamail research* reveals overindulging in pointless chit-chat is costing businesses more than £1000 per employee each month in wasted time.

Leaders must rethink their remote strategy fast, or we are heading for a global productivity dive and total economic ruin.

Teams Need Uninterrupted Time

42% of remote workers surveyed felt they were “more productive” after working for a long period of uninterrupted time as they found having a continuous stream of virtual distractions on various apps deeply distracting. On video calls, 42% of people frequently dial in and contribute nothing, and 56% wish they spent less time on video-calls. And yet, 73% of respondents counted video-calls as “work-done”, which suggests that video calls give a dangerous illusion of productivity, when in reality very little work is completed or produced.

Wundamail research* reveals that teams benefit from limited virtual meetings and time away from their colleagues in the remote set-up to maintain work productivity.

Verbal communication evaporates, but write-ups stick.

The most worrying attribute of video-conferencing for teams is the “lack of follow-up” after the virtual meeting – 27% of employees found this to be the biggest communication barrier in their team. People were three times more likely to deliver on actions agreed in writing instead of video, as they failed to remember key information.

Video Meetings Have Too Many Communication Barriers

Technical issues emerged as the most prevalent problem in video meetings (73%), followed closely by interruptions and people talking over one another (59%). In addition, 1 in 3 people suffered a lack of focus in video meetings.

Virtual meetings transfer (and often amplify) the most inefficient parts of the traditional office to home working, and businesses who fail to find a solution will lose productivity and fall behind.

Businesses need to reduce video-chatting and introduce automatic, written updates and daily check-ins into their remote set-ups to keep productivity levels consistent.

Wundamail Research* reveals the following:

Businesses waste time and resources by holding excessive meetings on apps such as Zoom.

58% of employees say video meetings waste time and 21% feel they actively hinder progress.

72% of users suffer bandwidth issues, while 59% found interruptions and people talking over each-other to be distracting and counter-productive.

42% of people admit they frequently dial in and contribute nothing

30% fail to deliver on actions agreed over video call

Replacing virtual meetings with automatic check-ins could save businesses over £1000 per employee, per month in lost productivity.

Full Link to the Coronavirus Business Report – Are Virtual Meetings a Recipe for Economic Disaster?

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 30,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully we can share your story too and reach our global audience.

Irish Tech News

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking