In the equality of remote meetings, the linguistic and cultural diversity of the participants can play as important a role as the technology. But the latter remains the only means to bridge the gap…
Total return to the office: yes or no? The debate is still open between the desire for ‘normality’ and questions about what this new normality of working life is. We are experiencing one certainty: it is no longer possible to hold exclusively face-to-face meetings and video calls are an indisputable reality.
How much can these remote meetings improve the corporate climate and ensure equal access for all employees and external participants? I found a recent survey conducted by Jabra at the LSE Behavioural Lab particularly inspiring. The title, ‘Meeting Great Expectations: Behaviour, Emotion and Trust’, already explains its aim to understand the behavioural dynamics and impact of technology on business meetings.
Face-to-face wins, but remote can work
First fact: for 56% of respondents, face-to-face meetings are more effective. However, when hybrid meetings were organised with optimised and properly configured AV technologies, 84% of people reported an increase in user engagement. In short, where the ‘mimic’ confidence of presence fails, technological innovation can arrive. Actually, all professionals report higher levels of overall trust when they experience high-level professional technologies. Specifically: +27% in clarity of meetings, +35% in expressiveness and +47% in quality of contributions. In addition, remote users who collaborated in smart working received 22 per cent better confidence ratings than those who used audio and video integrated into their laptops.
But there is more. Cultural differences also influence meetings, regardless of technology. Analysing data on facial emotion recognition, the variable ‘attention’ revealed a clear difference between European participants and those from other continents. For example, Asian professionals showed 134% higher levels of attention, but spoke much less than their European colleagues. People’s professional development, therefore, also depends on the equity and inclusiveness of meetings. At the centre, according to the experts, there must always be a holistic approach by companies through the integration of teams, enabling them to collaborate effectively in hybrid meetings regardless of aptitude and cultural background.
Did we make you curious? Read the full report.
