Fatigued individuals show increased conformity in virtual meetings – a Sci Rep 14, 18807 (August 13, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-69786-6 “Virtual meetings are widespread in organizations despite being perceived as fatiguing; a phenomenon also known as Zoom fatigue. Research suggests that Zoom fatigue is stronger when the camera is on, potentially influencing individuals to conform to majority opinions during professional online meetings.”

Hybrid Work Has Changed Meetings Forever – Harvard Business Review (June 17, 2024) – “An analysis of 40 million virtual meetings from 11 organizations suggests that some habits, like using virtual meeting options even when in the office, are sticking. Further, data shows that meeting participation and camera usage correlates with retention.” Also: “Knowledge workers attend an astounding number of meetings, many of which aren’t a good use of their time. According to recent research from Microsoft, inefficient meetings are the number one barrier to productivity, with 68% of employees saying they don’t have enough uninterrupted focus time during the workday. Further, research shows that up to one-third of meetings are likely unnecessary. This issue negatively impacts productivity and engagement, with a cost estimate in the hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Meetings are a productivity killer—and 3 in every 4 are totally ineffective, according to a new wide-ranging study – Fortune (March 21, 2024) – “Five thousand knowledge workers across four continents took part in a recent survey by Australian software giant Atlassian. The vast consensus among those respondents: Nothing wastes more of their time than meetings.”

The Psychology of Pointless Meetings: Productivity’s Killer – Psychology Today (October 3, 2023) – “Employees who attend several meetings daily task-switch repeatedly and never have an uninterrupted swathe of time for focused work.”

Virtual Meeting Fatigue: Exploring the Impact of Virtual Meetings on Cognitive Performance and Active Versus Passive Fatigue – Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 28(6), 343–362. https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000362 (August 9, 2023) “In this study, we challenge the commonly held belief that virtual meeting fatigue manifests as exhaustion (i.e., active fatigue) resulting from overloading demands and instead suggest that participation in virtual meetings may lead to increased drowsiness (i.e., passive fatigue) due to underload of stimulation.”

Video-conferencing usage dynamics and nonverbal mechanisms exacerbate Zoom Fatigue, particularly for women – Computers in Human Behavior Reports Volume 10, May 2023, 100271 – “We provide empirical evidence that Zoom fatigue is influenced by the dynamics of individuals’ video-conferencing usage and their psychological experience of the meeting.”

Thinking Inside the Box: Why Virtual Meetings Generate Fewer Ideas – Insights by Stanford Business (June 29, 2022) – “A new study finds that on-screen meetings have a significant drawback: They hinder creative collaboration. The study, coauthored by Jonathan Levav of Stanford Graduate School of Business and Melanie Brucks of Columbia Business School, finds that in-person teams generated more ideas than remote teams working on the same problem.”

16 Essential Steps to Making Remote Meetings More Engaging – Forbes Communications Council (June 1, 2020) – “Now that virtual everything is the norm, it can be difficult to engage your audience.”

The Surprising Science Behind Successful Remote Meetings – MIT Sloan Management Review (May 21, 2020) “Poorly run meetings have a tremendously negative impact on team success, innovation, creativity, and on individuals’ well-being and stress… experiencing a poor meeting can even result in meeting recovery syndrome, where employees lose additional time and productivity mentally recovering from a bad meeting. My research suggests that only around 50% of meeting time is effective, well used, and engaging — and these effectiveness numbers drop even lower when it comes to remote meetings.”