How to sustain Inclusion and Belonging in remote and hybrid teams? - Intro
How to sustain Inclusion and Belonging in remote and hybrid teams? - Learnings from the trenches

An hybrid meeting is what you get when part of the attendees who join a videoconference are co-located, usually in a meeting room, the rest join from remote (which simply means: from a different place than the meeting room), and you expect the same level of interaction from all attendees.

I am trying to understand how to make hybrid meetings work well at my company because the vast majority of our meetings in the near future will be hybrid, for two reasons:

given how distributed we are nowadays, the amount of people who will join remotely is far far bigger today than a couple of years ago
the ones at the office will likely join video calls from a meeting room to not disturb the others around them.

Like anything ‘hybrid’, the playing field is not even for all participants, and it’s easy to make people connected remotely feel excluded.

The risk of excluding remote attendees increases if the people in the room…

are a lot
and are not aware of the challenge hybrid meetings entail, or do not acknowledge it
and are in a position of power.

So many things could go wrong for both the people in the room and the ones joining from remote and in presence attendees, and both have to make an effort to create an inclusive environment for all parties.

What could go wrong?

Imagine the following scenarios, and put yourself in the shoes of a remote attendee.

A person in the meeting room is speaking from a seat where the webcam cannot see them.
A person in the meeting room asks “Any questions?”, you raise hand in the videocall, in person attendees start asking questions straightaway and the owner of the meeting direct their attention to them.
A person in the meeting room is explaining something and then starts drawing on the physical whiteboard.
Two people in the meeting room start talking to each other while you are speaking.
In presence attendees go for a coffee break in the room, leaving mic and video on.
People in the meeting room join the meeting late because they were enjoying some chitchatting and didn’t pay attention to the clock.

How would you feel?

Now put yourself in the shoes of an attendee in the meeting room, and imagine the following situations.

None of the people connected from remote have their camera on.
Remote attendees start collaborating on a digital whiteboard.

How would you feel?

If it was me, I would feel in both cases disappointed, disconnected, excluded, not seen, angry, even.

Empathy on both sides 👐 is the key to a successful hybrid meeting

Technology helps with hybrid meetings, but behaviours are what marks the difference between a meeting that is inclusive for every participant, and one that it is not.

What kind of behaviours are most helpful?
As of today (which means that in the future I may change my mind!), I would summarise them in the following three guidelines.

1. Let the others see you

Remote?
Webcam on.

In the meeting room?
Sit where the webcam of the meeting room can frame you, or join through your own laptop.

The latter is the option that I favour, even it feels weird to be using your own laptop in a meeting room, because:

you appear in the video call with your own tile, which displays your name and let everybody see your face well (and not from a distance, as it usually happen when you use the equipment of the meeting room)
everybody in the video call can interact in the same way (share comments, present, raise hand, participate in a structured Q&A session, etc.), you just need to be careful with the microphones, to avoid any audio feedback.

2. There’s only one meeting, and it’s the one in the videoconference

In practice, it means that you should:

Avoid parallel conversations in the meeting room.
When you are phisically close to other people it’s easy to direct your attention to them, but remember that in an hybrid meeting the video call, not the meeting room, is the real place where all attendees are together.
Manage interaction through digital tools, for example Miro instead of the whiteboard, Google Docs instead of notes on a flipchart.

3. Go the extra mile

If you really care, there is something else you can do to make an hybrid call an inclusive place for everyone:

Do not disturb mode: on.
Mute the mic if you are not talking (also in the meeting room, so that remote folks won’t hear background noises such as people entering the meeting room, coffee machine, people moving things around on the table…), and pause the notifications (on your laptop, especially if you are the one presenting and sharing your screen, and on your smartphone, so that you won’t get distracted, and you won’t annoy the people around you).
Appoint a moderator, especially if there are lots of attendees in the meeting room and/or the meeting is gonna be a long one.

“We have always done things this way”

Last week I was going through the challenges of hybrid meetings with a colleague, and he told me “Oh come on raffa, we have always had hybrid meetings and we never paid attention to all those stuff”.
And that’s true, and they have always been crap for the remote attendees, but we - the people in the meeting room - couldn’t see it.

Now after three years of full remote work and good videocalls we can appreciate the difference, and we have the duty to do better!

Photo by Giulia Squillace on Unsplash