Quit saying that to be productive, staff – employees, consultants and volunteers – need to be onsite. 

Quit saying that, to be productive, we need to return to onsite meetings. 

Quit saying that, to build trust and to be more personal, we need to be talking face-to-face in the same room. 

Stop it with that nonsense. 

Why do you think face-to-face meetings are more productive or are better ways to build trust in a team? I have had enough time wasted in onsite meetings to last a LIFETIME. I have sat in more onsite, face-to-face meetings than I can count where nothing was accomplished.

I’m not saying never to have onsite meetings. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t ever work together in the same time and place.

But this assumption that onsite meetings are somehow automatically better, more productive, have more personality, allow people to get to know each other better, is just BOLLOCKS. 

If your team doesn’t trust each other, if your team feels it can’t rely on certain members, if your team isn’t communicating well with each other, none of that is going to be automatically solved by changing from online to onsite meetings. 

None of what makes for an effective meeting automatically happens just because you are meeting onsite. NONE of it. Quit implying that it does. 

Effective meetings, whether onsite or online:

• have clear agendas that are communicated before the start. 
• have an agenda that is results-oriented/mission-focused.
• start at the time they say they will and they end at the time they say they will. 
• are effectively facilitated so that attendees stick to the agenda and scheduled decisions are made. 
• allow everyone to speak within the time frame given.

The meeting facilitator needs to have recognition from members to be the person to remind attendees if the discussion period for an agenda item is finished now and it’s time for a decision, or when to table a decision for the next meeting. The facilitator needs to be empowered to remind people who didn’t read the meeting materials beforehand that, in the future, they need to do that. 

Case in point: I served on a board for three years. Our meetings became vastly more productive when we moved ONLINE because of the pandemic. I even got to know some of the board members more in our online meetings – the side chats on Zoom allowed truly EVERYONE to express their opinion, even their humor.

Meeting face-to-face, in the same place and time, does not magically create better communications and does not automatically create a sense of team. If your online meetings aren’t working out the way you want, the problem is probably not that you are all online.

Want to learn more how to effectively work with people online? The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The lessons here are focused on engaging volunteers, but all are easily adapted for working with paid staff. If you want to learn how to leverage online tools to communicate with and support volunteers, whether those volunteers are mostly online (virtual volunteering) or they provide service mostly onsite at your organization, and to dig deep into the factors for success in supporting online volunteers and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

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