Though you may be familiar with hybrid working now, you are still having difficulties holding a smooth hybrid meeting and event. When we have a meeting in the office, we sometimes forget some members are working remotely. They sometimes cannot hear clearly when we discuss or they cannot see the screen we share. To maximize employee engagement in meetings, we would like to share a few tips you can pay attention to. The hybrid meeting checklist is a great tool for ensuring that your next meeting runs smoothly.

Before The Hybrid Meeting

1.Make sure your meeting technology can support both remote and in-office employees

For remote workers, you have to make sure that they all have a laptop or personal PC with a webcam and speaker and stable internet connection. This is the minimum requirement of video conferencing for remote workers.

But in the office, there are lots more to take care of. First, you need to make sure everyone can be heard. If the meeting room isn’t large, you can think about using an external microphone for laptop. When the room is large, installing a ceiling microphone array can be a better idea to let people from every corner be heard. For the webcam, PTZ camera can offer a variety of views of the speaker and engage remote meeting attendees. To optimize hybrid collaboration experience, you can feature PTZ conference room cameras.

Because of hybrid working, people now use different kinds of devices to work, a wireless presentation system is a must-have for your meeting room. ASTROS wireless presentation solutions support Windows, macOS, iOS and Android devices to wirelessly share the screen and do more than screen mirroring. What’s more, IT staff can easily manage gateways with a browser-based platform – ASTROS Manager and leave more time for other important tasks.

We have talked about the hardware you can adopt for your meeting room. For software, there are many video conferencing software to choose from, such as Teams, Zoom, Google Meets or Cisco Webex. You can see which meets your needs and fits your workflow.

2.Test the hardware and software in a practice meeting

If you have never held a hybrid meeting before, it’s better to do a test before the formal meeting. If you are not familiar with the equipment, don’t hold the formal meeting immediately. You will waste other attendees’ time. You can just ask a remote colleague to test the workflow with you. Check if the speaker, webcam and the software work and if your colleague can hear and see you and your slides.

3.Set goals for your meeting

Be clear about what you want to talk about in the meeting and what results you want. If you don’t have an agenda or you just want to gather ideas from team members, the meeting will go meaningless. Remote team members may just do their things without paying attention to what you say. A hybrid meeting requires more discipline to guarantee productivity. If you are the meeting organizer, you need to write down the agenda and know your goals for the meeting, so your meeting won’t be a waste of time.

During The Hybrid Meeting

1.Ask for regular feedback from remote members

Sometimes the internet goes crashing, sometimes the attendee forgets to turn on the microphone. It’s easy for in-office workers to ignore remote workers during the meeting. As you finish one slide or one topic, remember to ask remote workers if they get what to do and what didn’t work for them.

2.Provide social time to check remote members work and life quality

You can use the first 5 minutes of the meeting to chat with remote attendees about their daily life. This is a great way to make remote workers feel being a part of a team and to check if they need anything we can help. If you don’t have social time, remote workers may have the feeling of isolation or get meeting fatigue. It’s better to leave time for small talk to energize the team.

3.Limit your meeting time and end on time

No matter if it’s a normal meeting or a hybrid meeting, make sure you always start and end the meeting on time. To increase productivity, don’t make your meeting long. The brain is only able to maintain true focus for around 45 minutes. You can also check if a meeting is really necessary or using an email is enough.

After The Hybrid Meeting

1.Provide meeting minutes and files to everyone

Because not everyone is in the office, it’s important for the meeting organizer to send files and meeting minutes to attendees. So your team members know the action items. It’s also a chance to double-check if everyone is on the same page.

2.Track each action item

Ensuring your project can run smoothly, In the meeting minutes, you should write down the task owner for each action item. Then you can track each action item easily. Don’t just hold a meeting without any action item. That only means your meeting is a waste of time.

Now You Are Ready for Hybrid Meetings!

Running a smooth hybrid meeting isn’t difficult, but you need to prepare well. If you need to upgrade your AV equipment, our Pro AV experts are always here to help. The wireless presentation system can fit in your hybrid work and give you a good collaboration experience.