Online meetings are great and they have kept organizations and so many relationships nourished because of the alternative method to connect and communicate. It has made the workplace more inclusive (as locations do not matter) and collaborative (as many people can join in without any restrictions of location and space) What I am arguing is the overdoing of the good has actually not worked out. It is causing social fatigue of a new kind due to the quality and the quantity of the interactions.

Social fatigue is defined as being emotionally overextended & exhausted by social situations. 

Earlier this would mean the exhaustion that follows socializing with friends and family over the weekend after a hectic week at work which also involves intense interactions with people be it customers or one’s own team.

But in these pandemic ridden “work from home” times social fatigue has taken on a different form altogether. Video calls seemed the perfect solution to remote work, but they wear on the emotional and mental bandwidth of people in previously unknown ways causing immense fatigue.

Online meetings are great and they have kept organizations and so many relationships nourished because of the alternative method to connect and communicate. It has made the workplace more inclusive (as locations do not matter) and collaborative (as many people can join in without any restrictions of location and space)

What I am arguing is the overdoing of the good has actually not worked out. It is causing social fatigue of a new kind due to the quality and the quantity of the interactions. Consider the following –

1.      People are saying there are many more meetings than what one used to have earlier. And meetings are taking longer for obvious reasons adding to the overdose of people engagement. I have heard executives who are working late to complete their work once meetings are over for the day.

2.      Communication is more non-verbal than verbal. It is said 7% are the words, 38% is the tone and 55% is the body language. But how much of the body language are you able to read looking the heads and shoulders of people. In the normal world your brain would process so much of the data that it picks up about the body language without you having to even try.

3.      On top of this in a video meeting you are faced with a gallery of people threatening your ability to focus and thus wearing you out even more.

4.      Lastly, in video meetings, one is not able to seek clarification for notes with their neighbor; hence one has to concentrate more which in turn wears them out.

We need to first recognize that something is not right here. It’s said when you overdo something, even medicine becomes poison. So let this online meeting bit be used as long as it helps our cause not when it starts costing us.

Would you agree?