Meetings have evolved since the start of pandemic, challenging conventional wisdom about engagement levels of remote workers, according to new research published Tuesday in the Harvard Business Review.

Despite a gradual return to office, employees participated in 60% more remote meetings in 2022 as compared to 2020, according to research conducted by Andrew Brodsky, assistant professor of management at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and Mike Tolliver, director of product management at workspace collaboration analytics company Vyopta.

The researchers used webcam metadata from Zoom, Microsoft Teams and WebEx to compare the frequency, size and duration of remote meetings at 10 technology, healthcare, energy and financial services companies during six-week periods from April through mid-May in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Meetings got smaller, with the average number of participants dropping by half — to 10 this year, down from 20 in 2020 — owing in part to a significant rise in one-on-one conversations, research showed.

Two-thirds of those one-on-ones were unscheduled, as compared to just 17% directly after the pandemic.

The increase in frequency, particularly in smaller meetings, coupled with the large number of spontaneous chats, indicates a high level of employee engagement, according to Brodsky and Tolliver. It also suggests that remote meetings have evolved to resemble in-person meetings more closely.

The engagement effect 

Better engagement is good news for employers, who worry that remote work is eroding innovation. Two-thirds of more than 5,000 IT and HR professionals said employees were more innovative in the office, according to a survey commissioned by VMware.

Engagement, as measured by meetings with coworkers, is a reasonable proxy for collaboration, which can be indicative of other characteristics, such as productivity and innovation.

“It would be hard to argue that someone who is disengaged is highly productive,” Tolliver said in an interview with CIO Dive. 

“The most innovative teams I’ve been part of are highly collaborative teams,” said Tolliver. “Innovation doesn’t really come out of a dark silo where people are cordoned off.”

In technology, where skilled programmers and engineers are hard to come by and there is strong worker preference for remote and hybrid models, the research confirms what many already suspected. 

Not only do technologists seek out jobs with remote flexibility, many are willing to change employers if it’s not an option, according to a Dice survey of 950 IT professionals published in November.

“Technologists know they're in demand and they know that they can work in a remote environment very effectively,” Art Zeile, CEO of DHI Group, Dice parent company, told CIO Dive. “They've proven that over the last several years.”

The remote learning curve

Learning to use the full suite of remote technologies doesn’t happen overnight. Developing rules of etiquette for group and one-on-one video conferences takes time as well.

Employers, IT support staff and the companies that supply remote work technologies evolved along with the broader workforce in the three years since COVID-19 began to spread.

In research not yet published, Brodsky and Tolliver found that several metrics related to “meeting hygiene” had improved substantially. These include reductions in participants showing up late for meetings, the number of rejoins per meeting, and the number of meetings that failed due to technical difficulties.

“When someone joins a meeting late, it can show unfamiliarity with the technology, or it could be a problem with the technology itself,” Tolliver said.

There are steps companies can take to promote engagement through improvements in remote meetings. Encouraging synchronous work schedules for workers on and off premises, and reducing some of the strain around meetings are two strategies suggested by Brodsky and Tolliver.

Companies can alleviate some of the stress and fatigue associated with too much screen time by making video an option rather than a requirement during remote meetings, Tolliver said.

Finally, the research methodology used by Brodsky and Tolliver could help companies identify areas within their organization in which engagement is flagging, based on decreased meeting frequency. When the number of meetings begins to decline, it might be time to put videoconferencing software aside for a day or two and schedule an in-person team building session.