Video Conferencing: When It Works—and When It Doesn’t

Video conferencing went from an occasional business tool to part of everyday work remarkably quickly.

For many of us, the pandemic was the moment that happened. Remote workers used video to connect with their teams. Sales representatives replaced travel with online meetings. Schools moved classes online. Families, boards, associations, and just about everyone else learned how to find the mute button.

And, predictably, there was resistance.

Only a few weeks into widespread remote work, Forbes published an article titled “No, Please, Not Another Video Call!” questioning whether seeing one another actually improved the experience.

Years later, we have a much better answer.

Video conferencing is incredibly useful.

It’s also not the answer to every meeting.

Video Conferencing Has Become a Normal Business Tool

We no longer need a global emergency to justify meeting someone on video.

A client may be across town or across the country. A team may have employees working from several locations. A vendor may only need twenty minutes of our time. A prospective employee may live several states away.

In all of those situations, video can eliminate travel, shorten scheduling delays, and allow people to meet face-to-face without having to occupy the same room.

That has changed the practical definition of a business meeting.

The question is no longer, “Can we meet remotely?”

Of course, we can.

The better question is, “Would this meeting work better remotely or in person?”

Video Meetings Can Save an Enormous Amount of Time

This may be the most obvious advantage.

If a one-hour meeting requires thirty minutes of travel in each direction, it isn’t really a one-hour meeting.

Video conferencing can remove that overhead completely.

That makes shorter meetings much more practical. A quick project discussion, client update, review of a document, or thirty-minute consultation doesn’t require half a day simply because everyone needs to get to the same place.

For businesses that work across regions, the savings can be considerably larger. A meeting that once required a flight, hotel, rental car, and two days away from the office may sometimes be handled effectively from a laptop.

That doesn’t mean the trip is never worthwhile.

It means we have another option.

The World Really Did Get Smaller

One of the predictions in the original version of this article has held up particularly well.

Video conferencing made geography less important for certain kinds of work.

Businesses can hire people outside their immediate market. Consultants can work with clients hundreds of miles away. Project teams can include people from several offices. A company can bring a specialist into a meeting without asking that person to spend an entire day traveling.

That can considerably expand the expertise available to a business.

It can also broaden recruitment. The best person for a particular position may not live within commuting distance of the office, and some roles no longer require that they do.

Of course, remote and hybrid work bring their own management challenges. Distance makes clear employee communication even more important because employees don’t receive as much information simply by being in the same physical environment.

Seeing People Still Matters

One advantage video has over a traditional conference call is remarkably simple: we can see each other.

Facial expressions, gestures, and reactions provide information that voices alone sometimes miss. You can see when someone looks confused, wants to speak, reacts strongly to an idea, or may not be following the conversation.

That can make video particularly valuable when people don’t know one another well.

Putting a face to a name can help humanize a relationship that might otherwise exist entirely through email and phone calls.

But the camera isn’t magic.

People can still misunderstand one another. Someone can still dominate the meeting. Participants can still multitask. A twelve-person video call can be every bit as ineffective as a twelve-person meeting in a conference room.

The technology creates the opportunity to communicate.

It doesn’t guarantee good communication.

Not Every Meeting Needs Cameras On

This is something many workplaces had to learn the hard way.

There are times when seeing everyone is useful.

There are also times when requiring cameras adds absolutely nothing to the meeting.

If the group is reviewing a spreadsheet, watching a shared screen, or listening to a quick operational update, staring at ten small rectangles of coworkers may not improve the experience.

People may also have legitimate reasons for leaving cameras off: bandwidth, workspace privacy, accessibility, fatigue, or simply the nature of the meeting.

A good meeting culture should focus on participation rather than assuming visible faces are proof that people are engaged.

Screen Sharing May Be Video Conferencing’s Most Useful Feature

For many businesses, the greatest value of modern video conferencing isn’t actually the video.

It’s screen sharing.

A designer can walk a client through a layout. A developer can demonstrate a problem with a website. A salesperson can explain a proposal. An employee can show a manager exactly where a software process is breaking down.

Everyone can look at the same thing at the same time.

That makes complicated subjects much easier to discuss.

It can also support learning. In our article on corporate training, we talk about the value of allowing employees to observe a process and then practice it themselves. Remote screen sharing can make that kind of demonstration possible even when the trainer and employee aren’t sitting side by side.

Video Conferencing Can Improve Access to Expertise

Remote meetings also make it easier to bring the right person into a conversation for only the part where they’re needed.

A specialist can join for twenty minutes, answer questions, and leave rather than spending half a day attending a meeting that mostly doesn’t involve them.

That can improve both efficiency and decision-making.

For small and mid-sized businesses, this is particularly useful because not every area of expertise needs to be housed permanently within the company.

Your attorney, accountant, marketing partner, technology provider, benefits consultant, or other outside professional can participate when their perspective is useful without the logistics that once made frequent collaboration difficult.

Remote Meetings Can Become Too Easy

There is, however, a downside to removing all that travel and logistical friction.

It becomes incredibly easy to schedule a meeting.

Too easy, sometimes.

When nobody has to reserve a conference room or drive across town, the calendar can quickly fill with thirty-minute video calls that might have been handled in three sentences.

Before scheduling the meeting, ask:

• Do we actually need a conversation?
• Could this be answered via email or in a project management system?
• Do all of these people need to attend?
• What decision needs to be made by the end?

Convenience doesn’t automatically make a meeting necessary.

Video Fatigue Is Real Enough to Plan Around

Video meetings demand attention in a slightly unusual way.

You’re watching other people while also seeing yourself. Multiple faces are visible at once. Audio delays or people talking over one another require additional concentration. Participants may feel they need to appear engaged every second because everyone else can see them.

Do that for several hours without a break, and it becomes tiring.

The answer isn’t to abandon video conferencing.

It’s to use it more deliberately.

Keep meetings as short as the subject allows. Leave space between calls when possible. Don’t invite people who don’t need to be there. Use audio-only or asynchronous communication when video isn’t adding anything useful.

Better meetings often have less to do with the platform and more to do with respecting people’s time.

Video Conferencing Should Support Employee Engagement, Not Replace It

Remote technology can connect people, but simply scheduling more video meetings doesn’t necessarily make employees feel connected.

Engagement still comes from meaningful communication, clear expectations, useful feedback, appropriate autonomy, recognition, and relationships with managers and coworkers.

That’s why the conversations we discuss in 3 Questions to Increase Employee Engagement matter whether they happen across a desk or across a screen.

The medium changes.

The quality of the conversation still matters more.

When Should You Meet in Person?

For all the advantages of video conferencing, humans are still humans.

Sometimes being in the same room matters.

In-person meetings can be particularly valuable when:

• You’re beginning an important relationship.
• The subject is emotionally difficult or sensitive.
• A team needs extended creative collaboration.
• The work involves physical products, spaces, or equipment.
• You’re trying to strengthen relationships rather than simply exchange information.
• The conversation is complex enough that informal interaction before and after the meeting has value.

A sales representative may handle several routine client meetings by video and still decide that an important annual planning conversation deserves a plane ticket.

A team may work remotely for most of the year and still benefit enormously from spending a day together.

One format does not have to defeat the other.

Hybrid Meetings Need More Planning Than They Appear To

There is one meeting format that can be harder than either fully remote or fully in-person: half the room is physically present, and the other half joins remotely.

It’s very easy for the people on the screen to become spectators while everyone in the room talks to one another.

If you regularly conduct hybrid meetings, make sure remote participants can hear and see what’s happening. Give them room to speak. Share materials digitally rather than relying on a whiteboard that they can barely see.

Someone facilitating the meeting should consciously include the remote participants.

If half the group has to keep saying, “Sorry, we couldn’t hear that,” the technology isn’t actually creating access.

The Right Meeting Depends on What You’re Trying to Accomplish

The best thing to come out of our forced experiment with remote communication may be that businesses now have more choices.

We don’t have to travel because “that’s how meetings are done.”

We also don’t have to meet on video because “that’s how we do everything now.”

We can choose.

Sometimes the right answer is email.

Sometimes it’s a phone call.

Sometimes it’s a video.

Sometimes, everyone really should sit around the same table.

Good communication starts by understanding what the conversation needs—not by automatically choosing the tool we used last time.

Technology Should Make Business Easier, Not Simply Add Another Meeting

At Paradux Media Group, we work with businesses that use technology in all kinds of ways to communicate with employees, customers, vendors, and partners.

The technology itself is rarely the most interesting part.

What matters is whether it helps people communicate more clearly, make better decisions, and get useful work done.

If you’re looking at your marketing, communication, or business systems and wondering whether the tools you’re using are actually helping, contact Paradux Media Group. Sometimes a small change in how the work gets done can make the whole experience considerably better.