12 Tips on How to Run Effective Remote Meetings
Run fewer remote meetings and make each one answer a question: replace status meetings with written updates, write the agenda as questions, and keep video optional in long meetings. Kipwise is a 100% remote team and running remote meetings is part of our everyday workflow, so these 12 tips come from how we work, including the tools we use.
1. Avoid unnecessary meetings
It is easy for remote managers to call unnecessary meetings just to make sure everything is on track. But checking in doesn’t have to be a meeting: many tools let remote teammates give progress updates on their own schedule. Project management tools like Trello, Asana or Businessmap (formerly Kanbanize) track progress on tasks, and a status update tool like Steady (formerly Status Hero) is a place for teammates to post what they finished and what is blocking them. That saves meeting time for real discussion and brainstorming instead of status updates.
Avoiding unnecessary meetings matters more on a remote team. In one office you can schedule meetings at the start of the day for everyone to minimize interruption. Remote teammates are often in different time zones, so a meeting is more likely to land in the middle of someone’s day and interrupt them.
2. Invite the right people
Invite only the people who are relevant. The others tend to stay silent and feel frustrated while the time slips away.
Sometimes this means breaking a long meeting into smaller sections. Instead of one very long all-team meeting with in-depth updates on every area of the company, give a quick overview at the start of the all-team meeting, then let the relevant people break into smaller groups for the discussions that concern them.
3. Rotate meeting time if needed
If your team has teammates around the world, sometimes no time works for everyone. For some all-team meetings, instead of requiring teammates to attend at really odd hours (waking up at 6 can hurt a full day’s productivity), rotate the meeting time so teammates in different time zones take turns at the convenient slot.
Worldtimebuddy is our favorite for picking a time across time zones: add your teammates’ locations and it creates a table showing what time it is in each location.
4. Record the meeting, on purpose
Recording keeps teammates who can’t attend in the loop and lets you replay parts of the meeting to check important details. If someone is taking notes, they can jot down the timestamps of important moments so teammates can jump to a point instead of watching the whole video.
Record on purpose, and announce it. Some US states, including California, require the permission of everyone in a recorded conversation, and with attendees in several states or countries, UC Berkeley’s privacy guidance says to assume the strictest rule applies. Tell people before the meeting that it will be recorded and why, and let anyone who objects join without video or audio. The same guidance advises against recording a meeting you wouldn’t record in a room.
5. Start on time and set a time limit
Unlike onsite workers, whom you can physically urge into the meeting room when a meeting is about to start, remote teammates need self-discipline. State the end time in the invite and stick to it. To help your remote meetings start on time:
- Set up automated meeting reminders: for example, you can set up Slack reminders for regular meetings, or use Zapier to connect your Google Calendar and Slack to send out notifications.
- Encourage teammates to dial in 2-3 minutes before the scheduled meeting time. If the meeting starts at 4pm, join the meeting link a few minutes before instead of at 4pm sharp. Otherwise, the first 5 minutes of the meeting will likely go to waiting for everyone to load the meeting and troubleshooting audio or video issues.
- Inform your teammates if you will be late. Tell them before the meeting, so they can decide whether to change the meeting time to accommodate you or start on time if your involvement is not critical.
6. Ask for video in small discussions, and make it optional elsewhere
In a small discussion, ask everyone to turn on their video. Seeing each other’s faces helps people feel connected and keeps communication smooth, because you can see when a teammate looks like they have something to say.
For long meetings and large groups, we recommend making video optional. In a four-week field experiment with 103 employees, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, people reported more fatigue on camera-on days, and fatigue was linked to speaking up less and being less engaged in meetings. Ask for video where seeing faces matters, and let people switch it off where it doesn’t.
7. Choose a meeting tool that has dial-in options
It is hard to guarantee that your teammates will always have a good internet connection, so choose a tool that has dial-in options as a backup.
One hack we like to use with a poor connection: keep showing video over the internet but dial in for audio instead of using computer audio. The video might freeze or become unstable at times, but at least you will still be able to hear what your teammates are saying.
8. Mute yourself when needed
When you work from home, background noise can be hard to control. Mute your audio when you are not speaking to reduce the distractions it causes.
9. Some communication tips for remote meetings
Unlike in-person meetings where everyone is in the same room, remote meetings require more thoughtful communication to keep the conversation smooth.
- Have a meeting facilitator. There is no seating order in a virtual meeting, so a facilitator can prompt teammates to speak, especially if the meeting format involves round-robin discussion or sharing.
- Pause for feedback. Connectivity issues and delays make it easy to talk over each other in a remote meeting. Pause and leave space for silence at the right moments, so other people can give feedback or contribute if they want to.
10. Share the agenda ahead of the meeting
Plan the specific items you want to go over and share them in advance, so everyone can prepare. Otherwise, unprepared teammates may be busy preparing what they need to say instead of actively listening to others.
We recommend writing each agenda item as a question and naming who answers it, for example “Do we ship on Friday?” instead of “Release status.” A question tells people what to prepare and when the item is done. An item you can’t phrase as a question probably belongs in a written update instead of in the meeting.
11. Use tools to collaborate on meeting notes
To make it easier to summarize the important items discussed, key takeaways and action items, use tools that help you collaborate on meeting notes in real time.
At Kipwise, we always create a new Page on our Kipwise team knowledge hub before the meeting for the meeting notes. Using our real-time collaborative editor, everyone can see what has been jotted down, so nobody needs to write down something that someone else already has.
Want more tips and guidelines on writing effective meeting minutes or meeting notes? Check out our Meeting Minutes Template.
12. Share the meeting recap after the meeting
To make sure everyone is aligned on the key takeaways and action items, share the meeting notes from point 11 in the relevant Slack channel after the meeting, so everyone can see the recap and knows what needs to be followed up.
