July 2, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
In these belt-tightening times, trimming travel costs by holding meetings via phone, video, or the Internet has its appeal, but often comes at the expense of effective communication, concludes a new report by the Goodman Center.
A survey of more than 1,200 nonprofit and government employees about their use of videoand teleconferences and Webinars found that all too often the technologically enhanced meetings are plagued by technical difficulties, poor leadership, and lack of participation. The Goodman Center, which conducted the survey, is run by Andy Goodman, a California communications consultant, and the communications and marketing firm Lipman Hearne, in Chicago.
Technical Glitches
Phone, videoconference, and other such meetings are becoming increasingly common, the survey found. About 60 percent of respondents said they participated in teleconferences a few times a month, while 25 percent regularly took part in Webinars, and 8 percent in videoconferences.
Roughly half the participants said their organizations planned to schedule more such meetings.
When asked to evaluate their experiences using those three conference technologies, survey respondents offered slightly different critiques of each medium.
People who participated in teleconferences, for example, said they often were frustrated that other people on the call didn’t participate or could not be heard when they did. But they said what bothered them most during the meetings were poor leadership and lack of a clear agenda.
By contrast, complaints about technical issues tended to dominate respondents’ evaluations of videoconferences. Thirty-three percent of respondents said that technical glitches and background noise were the biggest time-wasters in videoconferences, followed by poor time management (12 percent), boring and irrelevant topics (11 percent), and lack of a clear objective (11 percent).
Survey participants reported experiences with Webinars that were slightly more positive, but respondents were more likely to attribute success or failure to the skills and leadership of the Webinar organizer. Among the common frustrations identified by Webinar participants were boring visuals, misleading descriptions of the Webinar topic, failure to receive supporting materials for the meeting or class, and organizers who try to cram too much information into the allotted time.
Training Needed
While many of those gripes apply to meetings in general, the report suggests that some of the problems may stem from a lack of training in how to run effective Webinars or teleand videoconferences. The survey found that more than 70 percent of the respondents had received no formal instruction in how to use the technologies to conduct successful meetings.
The report, “Dialing In, Logging On, Nodding Off,” includes links to other resources, and is available free at the Goodman Center’s Web site
