Depends on how many are in the meeting, how dull it is, and whether I need to be doing other things while “listening” to folks who love the sound of their voice too much.

This for me. A meeting with 50 attendees where I am not going to be talking, camera off. A team meeting with 6 people, camera on.

Manager to 30 odd here – baffled as to why screens on matters. There are better ways of making sure people are engaged in a meeting if that’s what you’re worried about?

Sometimes I have my camera on to show I’m listening and to make sure people see my expressions, especially if I’m leading the meeting. Sometimes I don’t, maybe:

– my cat/child is messing around behind me

– I don’t want a client or whatever to judge me based on my hair and bookcase organisation

– I just want to listen and check my emails at the same time

– I’m sick of staring at my screen

– I’m eating

– I don’t feel like it

Much like we wouldn’t stop people going on STW during the day because the assumption is that they are mostly getting on with their work, it’s far more effective <span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>to trust that people want to do a good job until there’s some actual evidence that they aren’t.</span>

Why don’t you ask people in their 1:1s what they think rather than us randomers?

Also, and maybe I’m off here but calling out “the younger members” definitely sounds like you already have an issue with a specific set of your team members.

Expectation of my team is that anything longer than 30 mins is camera on, anything less is by choice but should be cameras on unless you’re traveling, in an airport etc.

If your only regular contact with them is those regular 30 mins meetings then I’d politely ask them to be present, via camera.

All of this was agreed as part of our personal contracting when I established the team, as was being able to call people out when it’s very apparent they’re reading emails, looking at phones etc etc while meant to be participating in a meeting. They now find it decent sport to call each other out which saves me the hassle. We also set a standard that we’d be on the call on time, every time. Why on earth do folk think it’s OK to rock up unprepared and late just because it’s a google meet or teams, or whatever solution you use.

All of this was agreed as part of our personal contracting when I established the team, as was being able to call people out when it’s very apparent they’re reading emails, looking at phones etc etc while meant to be participating in a meeting.

I quit.

Camera always off for me, otherwise people can tell I’m working on 3 other tasks while in the call

If my manager put in place a camera mandate that would be great, provided she’s happy with me not doing any actual work and just looking good in calls

People are being forced to work from a place that has not been properly set up as a place of work. WTF do you need to spy on people in their homes. They could be sat in their bedroom, have a partenr or kids wandering round or jusy haven’t done the washing up. When people are back in the office you will be able to oggle at them. Leave them alone now.

Speak to them one on one and ask them if they would prefer to keep their cameras off unless in an office environment?

bang out of order to mandate it, and it certainly wouldn’t make me turn mine on if I didn’t want to. I do for certain meetings depending where I am sat in MY house.

I don’t understand why video calling is even a thing when voice works just as well – unless you have some element of deafness to work around and you have a signer for everyone. If you are screen sharing for presentations or something, then that’s another matter.

I don’t need to be looking at your image on screen in order to listen to what you’re saying, I can very easily be looking out of the window and manage a coherent and insightful reply*. We had a big push for it back at The Start, thankfully it seems to have subsequently died down a fair bit.

* As much as I ever can, anyway.

Every job, and every meeting is different. But that much of how we all communicate is non-verbal is fact. Working with remote teams during a stressful couple of years has compounded this in my experience. I find the emotion that this is eliciting here interesting too. This hasn’t even been raised by any of our teams, and if the camera’s off it’s normally prefixed with, ‘oh, I’m sorry no camera because…’*

*”I really don’t feel like it” is fine.

No mandating here. Some people have them on every time, others rarely. Makes no odds to me. I (believe I) can tell when people are present. However, I have done a fair bit of coaching so I’m probably attuned to listening to what is – and isn’t – being said more than the average bear.

I quit.

Agreed. A sense of empathy to the workload of others is required; the new ‘new’ way of working has resulted in back to back meetings, more pressure to deliver, and a general feeling of etiquette has gone out of the window.

For example, when in my last role, when I was last in the office, now two years ago – if I had a back to back meeting in a meeting room, I would need a gentlemans break, I’d need to get a glass of water – or simply walk from one meeting room/building to the other. All of this meant that I’d need at least 5 mins between meetings – so I’d either finish early – or be late to the next. In every case, nobody batted an eyelid if you slipped in late (unless it was an exec meeting, to which everyone prioritised).

Now, we have org knobbers sliding into your 15 min diary gaps carefully crafted for all of the above – or even taking your lunch breaks without a care to whether you’ve had 5 meetings back to back since 9am.

So yeah, sometimes my camera is off – I’m probably making a cup of tea, or maybe loading the washing machine, or in some cases, dropping the kids off at the pool during a ‘listen in only’ call (don’t do what one of our PMs did and forget to mute).

Finally: cameras on – it is exhausting, more so than actual f2f – so bear this in mind. In addition, if you want them to focus on you, you MUST provide for additional time for them to do their ACTUAL jobs. Think about how long the meeting is – is it an hour? Why – is there an agenda? all of these ettiquete things help people be prepared, engaged and ready to contribute.

Nothing worse than rocking up to meetings that add zero value, have no agenda or any intended outcome. Also – always shorten the meeting time by AT LEAST 5 minutes to allow people a small break.

Its not rocket science really – but to even be asking the question suggests that the OP needs to spend a little time on their empathy – every employee will have different needs and working styles to work at their best – one size never fits all.

A meeting.moves at the speed of the slowest mind in the room … all but one participant will be bored, all but one mind under-used”

Aren’t most meetings a waste of time anyway?

It’s threads like this that make me very grateful it’s just me and my dog at work!

🙂

@the-muffin-man – oh, with cameras on I’ve met 3 dogs, 2 chinchillas and a cat today. 2 dogs asleep here too. Good day of zooming so far.

I’d question the OPs management style based on the thread title alone.

Should not just be a question for managers!

OP said 3 x 30mins meetings a week.

That is entirely reasonable, although I would certainly be sensitive to the potential wellbeing of anyone who thought otherwise.

It’s quite normal and sensible to allow cameras off during other internal meetings, if the employees’ roles involve back-to-back calls.

They are still not in an office and cameras can be/feel like in intrusion into their personal lives.

I do like to have the screen on for all of my online man-dates TBF

They are still not in an office and cameras can be/feel like in intrusion into their personal lives.

Many people choose to use the background blur effect on Teams here.

I just show my background as I have an abstract painting by my daughter and some toy dinosaurs behind me, gives people something nicer than me to look at.

Which is fine if you have fancy stuff you want to show off. But others might not feel the same and should not be forced into having cameras on.

Admittedly the background blur gets rid of most things, but my wife still doesn’t like me having a camera on if I’m sat in the kitchen and she’s cooking or doing other house hold chores or kids making a snack after school.

Just think by mandating something like that, you’re really not thinking of individuals who haven’t chosen to work from home. Fine, say you’d like people to have cameras on for certain meetings, but understand if people don’t want to.

I would need a gentlemans break

At work? Dirty bugger.

Honestly though I have no idea what that means. Quick brandy and cigar?

Which is fine if you have fancy stuff you want to show off. But other might not feel the same and should not be forced into having cameras on.

Nor should anyone be forced to watch me kicking about in a dressing gown at half past ten or playing stuff on the XBox in the background whilst my OH works. She may be at work but I sure hell am not.

I agree with dmorts on this one.

Aren’t most meetings a waste of time anyway?

Yep, I don’t need them as prefer to work on email so I can respond when it suits me and others can think about stuff before replying rather than wasting my time in a meeting. When I do have to organise a meeting they are typically 5-10 minutes long and mainly because the person doesn’t understand/can’t work it out without an explanation.

Find the need to not want camera on is linked to call quality. Try:

1. Limit call duration with hard stop.
2. If you have general catchup / how are you blabla, limit it to the first x minutes of call and make it optional. People can dial in 5 minutes post call start and do proper work if they wish.
3. Let people wear a dressing gown / pants to call, eat / drink / stretch as they wish. If it doesn’t impact output ignore it.
4. Limit cam on time for internal calls to average of 30 min per day over week.
5. Only have call if it can’t be handled in Slack.

Most people will then be fine turning camera on and you are fine to mandate it if you are their manager.

Making people turn up for a 2hr 8am call with 30 mins of crap chat at start makes most people not want to turn camera on. Especially if you make engineers join calls with sales people.

We only meet 3 times a week for 30mins each time and I know most of them do not spend that much time on other calls so I don’t feel like it’s too much to ask. Am I being unreasonable to ‘mandate’ cameras on?

Yes. For all you know they could be flat sharing with loads of people on a kitchen table, working from their bedroom, have poor internet, or perhaps they want to keep their private home well… private. Stinks of Presentism to me. Plenty of people at my work either don’t turn their camera on or blur a background.

when wfh im in my kitchen for meetings that involve people I don’t work with on the regs I don’t have my camera on – simply because I don’t want them to see my kitchen. In fact I just have a black square and my name as I often run/sit in on user testing sessions so it looks im basically not there.

Well we’ve been running virtual teams longer than the rush to Teams Covid created.

In the olden days, we ran conference calls for groups of people from all around the World that had never seen each other or met. All the work got done and we measured work/progress by the usual methods. I do/did this for both internal and client facing work.

Looking at people remotely is a relatively new thing and a bit overrated IMO. I always switch my camera off.

It’s important for team cohesion when WFH, IME.

Pre skype etc when we had remote workes we just dialled into a call and no one complained about team cohesion…..

Pre skype etc when we had remote workes we just dialled into a call and no one complained about team cohesion…..

So pre-video calls, you didn’t do video calls?

Where’s the ROFL emoji when I need it?

@squirrelking: I have no idea what that means

In the same area as a ladies break – just the need to pop to the loo for a wee and anything else you need to do.

For instance, diabetics may be needing to administer insulin, people on meds may need to take them on time etc.

Generally, when we all used to be in person, there would be a natural break between meetings etc that allowed people to do all those things. In the corporate world I’m in, at least, where its a global arrangement, its gone nuts, with back to back days not uncommon. I’ve had days where I have not really moved from my desk for 6-7 hours…

However, reading back through the posts, I note the 3 x 30 min calls, assuming other team members don’t have many calls, so some of my points don’t apply – however, good etiquette goes a long way:

My rules for good meetings
1. Meeting invite title generally includes the outcome required – so if its a chinwag or biz update, say so – otherwise it needs a meaningful outcome-based title

2. Agenda: sent in the invite, and always ahead of the meeting Allows people to prepare anything they need to contribute (i.e. if someone needs to present or feed into) and also allows for structure – AOB is a often little used agenda point – but keeps meetings from descending into a farce of whingeing

3. If you must have video on, make sure everyone is muted. Cross talk is frustrating and encouraging use of the little hands thingy keeps it polite – often slow connections and technical difficulties mean some delays in sound mean its impossible to get anything done when everyone is saying ‘no, after you’.

4. If video on, encourage blurred backgrounds to keep distractions low. No comedy backgrounds, funny as they are, they just distract.

5. Always shorten meetings: 30 mins should be 25, 60 mins should be 50, and even then, validate whether you really need that long. Hour long meetings are workshops – anything over 30 mins loses the focus of everyone as Outlook/Gmail starts pinging in distractions

6. If these are regular meetings, consider alternating the chairperson of the meeting every so often to keep it fresh – engagement is hard, and giving those who are a little disengaged the baton will help them step up, but also allow the other team members to understand that person better from a way of working perspective. It also encourages a little bit of healthy competition.

7. Regular meeting timing: Never book a regular meeting after 3pm on a Friday, outside of 0930-1700 or during a common lunch hour period. It’ll just piss everyone off and you won’t get the traction.

8. In every meeting, plan something fun to look forward to next time – even if it’s when your next f2f will be – most people are missing the f2f interaction and the opportunity to informally spend time together

Sure there are others, but that’s generally the main approaches I use on my teams.

Plenty of people at my work either don’t turn their camera on or blur a background.

when wfh im in my kitchen for meetings that involve people I don’t work with on the regs I don’t have my camera on – simply because I don’t want them to see my kitchen. In fact

You know these programs have virtual backgrounds, right?

I like cameras on because I like to see my team’s happy smiling faces, and to watch them glaze over as I start speaking…

This is actually true for me. We’re all different and I’m clearly at the socially needy end of the scale, but I do like the feeling of being with people and you get this more when you can see facial reactions and get a bearing on body language, be it positive, negative or just puzzled.

It’s a funny thing because with real friends/family I’d rather have a quick phone call and video calls never really work. But with work I’m generally talking to people for a reason and that reason is to get their view of something, ask them to do something or otherwise attempt to influence folks or pick up what’s going on in often fairly nuanced situations. I really value the extra channel of info, or at least feeling of contact and having communicated that you get from being able to see someone’s face.

Anyway that’s my preference and others have different preferences so I’ve not attempted to mandate this. It’s not remotely about spying or wanting to see people’s spare rooms etc. It’s easy enough to set a background on zoom/teams to cover up your reality if you want. Though personally over the last two years seeing people’s different circumstances (kids bouncing off walls, perched in a small room etc etc) gives you more of a feeling for where they’re at. And all that said a couple of my team rarely turn their cams on in team catchups. Can’t see a reason to make it an issue.

Not everyone’s going to turn cameras on all the time (“I’m not wearing my hijab” – absolutely fair enough) but the more senior colleague who’s laptop webcam has apparently been broken for two years – this honestly does not enhance her chairing of meetings. And when my camera’s off I’m less engaged which these days means close to comatose.

[edit to say useful thread and I’ll try to understand the private world of the screenoffie’s a bit more]

or even taking your lunch breaks without a care to whether you’ve had 5 meetings back to back since 9am.

It’s not the other persons’ fault that you’ve not blocked out the time in your diary you need.

I’m an early starter, so lunch for me is 1130ish – or 12-2 if I’m going out for a ride. Either way, if I want time, I book myself ‘out’.

My 2p.

It’s ‘camera off’ unless I’m presenting. I don’t care what my colleagues bedroom / garage looks like, nor do I need to see ‘the whites of their eyes’.

The WFM model is causing a lot of issues for people, Business Owners, Managers and Workers alike, I know a lot of people who are nervous because they’re not flat out 9-5, hardly anyone worked flat out 9-5 when they were in the office, but they felt their presence alone gave the impression they were and worse still managers despite almost never doing so themselves, assumed they were as well!

Honestly and this isn’t directed at the OP or anyone else, if you’re in a management role, and you’re concerned about your team member’s level of input because you can’t see what they’re doing with your own eyes, you’re not going to struggle to adapt when this pandemic ends and we move away from this ’emergency footing’ of WFH to it becoming the norm for office based staff.

There is also a direct correlation between the change in use of communications methods from years ago to today.

Those of us who remember them, we used to use those things called landlines to call someone up, or go use the sneakernet to find someone and speak f2f.

Now, with the proliferation of instant messaging, with it included within everything – Whatsapp, Teams, Meet or Slack, the way of interacting has drastically changed.

Many people now have had their introvert dreams answered (me included) and can get a huge amount done through a few simple direct messages – which removes the need for a range of actual meetings.

Worth considering what the content of the meeting is before – as I mentioned – what is the outcome of the meeting (and could it be an email)…this is the eternal challenge of a good manager, which is to read the (team) room and see how people best respond and in which way, to situational communication.

@intheborders: It’s not the other persons’ fault that you’ve not blocked out the time in your diary you need.

I’m an early starter, so lunch for me is 1130ish – or 12-2 if I’m going out for a ride. Either way, if I want time, I book myself ‘out’.

I disagree. I understand what you’re saying, but a colleague who doesn’t use the scheduling assistants (or whatever) to view the meetings attendees availability is being lazy.

Its not hard to look at someones diary and see that they only have 30 mins spare in the day – it isn’t unreasonable to ask someone to reconsider if that slot must be used. Its created a huge new anxiety problem (as @PJay mentions) – many people now worry that they are not seen to be available or working enough and get stressed as to whether they should accept or ignore a meeting.

Its why good meeting titles, agendas etc. are vital so people can prioritise an invite accordingly.

I do respect your point though – but consider that Microsoft introduced the AI/ML driven Focus feature just to solve this problem – they could see that so many employees were essentially burning themselves out because of this. That being said, you need to nanny the Focus mode as it does have a habit of going too far (but occasionally that lends well to a good ride of a morning).

Ultimately the meeting organiser should take the lead on the respect of the attendees as to an appropriate time for a meeting. It got so bad in Vodafone when we were in the lockdown that it became a key set of rules that led to fundamental shifts in ways of working, including ‘no meeting’ days where you could use that day to do whatever you liked – as long as it was of positive benefit to you – which included going for a ride!

The meeting problem has become a massive problem in larger orgs for sure – and a lot of learnings have come out of it.

dmorts is mostly right but here’s a few observations I’ve made over the last few years (including pre-lockdown):

– the camera on / off “tone” is often set by the first person to arrive in the call. Everyone that arrives after just copies them.
– whoever is the most senior person on the call can create a domino effect. If the CEO turns up and doesn’t put their camera on, you soon notice others turning theirs off. However if they turn up and put theirs on, suddenly several people will follow the lead.
– the people with cameras off are 9/10 the least engaged. Perhaps they shouldn’t be at that meeting, but perhaps they should and you have a different issue.
– I do some voluntary committee type stuff outside work. There’s some spectacular ludites involved in 2 of those. All of them always have the camera on – whilst those things can be a PITA and agenda management is often poor etc – its anecdotal but people essentially want to be there (not always enthusiastically but nobody is doing it just to get paid!).
– I definitely don’t always have my camera on, and its pretty much a reliable sign that I couldn’t give a **** about the meeting, I’m doing something else, etc.

As for why have them on in the first place:
– I think you can tell a lot more about what someone thinks from their face than their words. Do you understand me? Was it a stupid comment? Were they joking? Are they talking but left mute on!
– Its easier to see when someone wants to speak – perhaps its time to stop and listen. You can do the same with “hands up” in teams etc – but that requires the person to initiate replying. Someone up there said: “A meeting moves at the speed of the slowest mind in the room” – with no cameras it moves even slower than than as people labour points everyone understood.
– it can be quite hard to know who is talking if you have a bunch of foreign accents on a call, a face helps. Depending on the platform you may see the name, or just some initials, or whatever they set as their icon (sometime their pic – othertimes their dog!). If theres multiple people in a room together the camera helps even more.
– after all, why bother with a phone call if a text would work (sometimes that is a good rule, but others you want a bit more expression, you want to know more).
– making new people feel part of the team is even harder if they don’t know what everyone looks like.

If someone tried to boss me into to putting the camera on for no good reason I’d pretty quick start inventing* reasons not to because I am a bastard. I’m likely to excuse myself if I have nothing to contribute. But equally o don’t mind camering and if I do you’re going to know I am there as I will be contributing and I will be actively engaging with silent people to drag them in video on or not.

One on one camera is on unless I am just chatting over stuff while doing other things.

I might try that motorbike trick though.

*I have a few genuine reason, pygamas until elevenses for one and my CAD machine doesn’t have a camera. And actually if I am tempting my cad machine and talking on my laptop I tend to turn it off because I will be looking the other way and it feels rude.

Company wide no-obligation and no pressure to have our cameras on here.

At the start of lockdown everyone felt pressure to be on-screen but the reality is many folk were/still are working from a desk in the corner of their bedroom. It’s just really awkward to be listening to Steve from accounts whilst trying to make out the name of book on his bedside table… It was a massive invasion of privacy and added naught to the meeting.

We did have a camera-on meeting / xmas social where we were all sat on our respective sofa’s for an hour having a drink, but that wasn’t really work and exceptional really.

If someone tried to boss me into to putting the camera on for no good reason I’d pretty quick start inventing* reasons not to because

Similar here. I like having the camera(s) on, would always have mine on out of choice assuming I wasn’t the only one… but make it obligatory and be prepared for Mr Awkward to make you wish they were turned off…