Virtual meetings are essential to remote team collaboration and productivity: they’re a place to align on the same goals, brainstorm, and get work done, as well as a powerful tool for bringing a team together. However, when these sessions are poorly run, it doesn’t take much to ruin the magic.

Meetings that lack intention or structure not only result in a waste of precious time but also become an obstacle to employee productivity and a source of frustration. It is no surprise, then, that many people find that meetings interfere with their real work, are boring and unproductive, and are simply too numerous.

As a leader, you don’t want your employees to feel that way. You want them to feel productive, engaged, and satisfied! So here we are, with some practical solutions to run shorter, more productive meetings and avoid common pitfalls when you’re remote.

1. To meet or not to meet?

Nobody likes to waste their time on meetings that don’t add value, so first things first:

Ask yourself if you really need a meeting or if you can get to the outcome in another way. Can you sum up the core of your meeting in an email or a short video message instead? Or, if your team has a set of recurring meetings for discussing any updates or blockers, can you solve your problem in the next meeting?

Avoid the temptation to “invite everyone just in case” and focus only on those people who are key to the meeting’s success.

2. Run meetings that work for your whole team

According to a recent report, 42% of remote workers surveyed felt they were “more productive” after working for a long period of uninterrupted time. Yet figuring out how to get everyone in the same virtual space and don’t disrupt productivity can be a struggle, especially if you’re working with a remote team that’s spread across multiple time zones.

  • When you’re choosing a time for your meeting, consider checking calendars to see people’s working hours first.
  • Try to cluster meetings together instead of spreading them throughout the day to create large windows of uninterrupted work time.
  • Avoid constant emergency or ad-hoc meetings, as these can break flow during an employee’s regular day.
  • Encourage team members to keep their calendars up to date. In this way, the people scheduling meetings will have a better understanding of the dates and times that work best for everyone.

3. Set a clear agenda

For every virtual meeting, it’s important to create a clear agenda that includes:

  • Key talking points and a time frame for each section
  • Attendants
  • What each team member is responsible for bringing to the meeting
  • Any relevant documents
  • A section for a Q&A or discussion

Share the agenda ahead of time so that everyone can prepare, set a time limit for the meeting, and stick to it — you want to make your meetings as valuable as possible!

4. Keep everyone engaged

All the points we’ve covered are fundamental to get a virtual meeting up and running. But here is the tricky part: keeping the team engaged when it comes time for the actual meeting.

In virtual settings, you don’t have all of those natural, in-person interactions that happen all the time in an office environment, so you have to work double hard to create them. At the beginning of the meeting, spend a few minutes checking in with everyone, catching up, or just talking about the latest series everyone is going mad about. This will create an open and relaxed atmosphere, as well as strengthen your team culture.

Also, consider that remote work can feel more challenging or tiring than in-person collaboration. A study conducted by Microsoft found that brainwave markers associated with overwork and stress are significantly higher in video meetings than non-meeting work. In a virtual meeting, people have to focus continuously on the screen to extract relevant information and stay engaged, and there are fewer non-verbal cues that help you read the room or know whose turn it is to talk.

To keep your team’s attention, try to punctuate long meetings with small breaks every thirty minutes and make sure everyone on the team has a job. Passive listeners may easily become bored or distracted, but if you assign them a role, you can make them feel like part of the action. For example, who will be taking notes? Who is in charge of the follow-up?

5. Walk out with a clear objective

Never end the meeting without stating your intention clearly and making sure that the goal of the meeting is accomplished.

Everyone should come out of a meeting 100% clear on these things:

  • What the next steps are
  • Who is responsible for each task
  • When each task is due
  • When the next meeting will be

And last but not least, don’t forget to track them after the meeting is over: everyone on your team will know who is working on what and how it’s going. In our team, we usually use Monday, but you can use any other task management tool that works for you.

If you are looking for more advice on how to manage a remote team, here you can find our Complete Guide to Working Remotely, designed to help company leaders and their team members face the challenges of the transition to remote work.

Learn tips from an experienced programmer on working remotely here.