How far would you go to escape a bad remote meeting?
Would you pretend to have internet troubles? Feign a cough? Pull up a video of a fire alarm and hope no one thinks too hard about why you have a siren in your house?
Bad meetings grind productivity to a halt. The more time wasted, the more everyone suffers, companies and employees alike. And when your workforce is remote, extra challenges come along for the ride — challenges like mismatched time zones, empty agendas, and, yes, even legitimate tech issues.
That’s why our CEO Job van der Voort likes to say, "The best way to manage meetings is not to have them!"
But meetings do have their place. And when run well, they can be catalysts for communication and collaboration.
Let’s talk about how meetings fit within an effective remote-first culture . After that, we'll review some expert advice from Job on reducing the number of meetings you have.
What is asynchronous culture, and why is it vital for remote work?
Asynchronous communication
is talking without expecting the other person to respond right away.
Think about emails or text messages. One person sends a message, and the other responds, usually not right away.
This is a dramatic departure from traditional office culture where meetings where the norm. But async is necessary in a remote work world. In fact, successful remote companies depend on async collaboration to function.
Think about it. Remote work has to compensate for:
Employees working from home
Team members spread around the globe
Flexible staff schedules
Mismatched time zones
Different cultural speaking quirks and cues
Meetings are nice when they work. But if you can create async documentation to be just as productive and skip the meeting altogether, wouldn't you prefer to do so?
The importance of documentation in async communication
Documentation is the backbone of async work. It keeps information accessible, clear, and easy to find. Without it, teams waste time searching for answers or waiting on responses.
If you're used to a meetings-first workplace, async documentation might feel unfamiliar. Take email, for example. You can find your old messages, but no one else can. That makes you a bottleneck.
A strong documentation culture fixes this. Write things down. Store them where everyone can access them. Make decisions visible. When information is open and shared, work moves faster, and teams stay aligned without endless back-and-forth.
Remote, for example, depends on Notion to store most of our documentation. We also use Slack differently than most companies do. Instead of sending direct messages, we default to tagging people in public channels with questions. We even track the percentage of messages sent within the company in DMs versus in public channels to ensure we default to transparency whenever possible.
Best practices for running remote meetings
If you must have a meeting, make sure it's a good one. Here are 10 tips for running productive meetings in remote environments:
1. Virtual commute time
Encourage participants to take a short, pre-meeting walk or exercise session to “take the place” of commuting. This helps the team mentally prepare and get in the right mindset for the meeting.
2. Silent start
Begin with a silent review of the meeting agenda or key documents involved. Take about five minutes for this. This ensures everyone is on the same page, reducing the likelihood of misunderstandings popping up.
3. Rotating chairperson
Rotate which team member is the meeting chair at each meeting. This will promote engagement, provide your team with leadership opportunities, and make the meetings more unique.
4. Emoji check-ins
Use emojis at the start of the meeting. Participants can quickly share their current mood or energy level. This light-hearted approach can build empathy and team cohesion.
5. “Two feet in” rule
Adopt a policy where participants are encouraged to fully engage in the meeting without multitasking. This can be symbolized by having both feet in the room, even though it’s virtual.
6. Focused feedback time
Set aside specific time for only constructive feedback to encourage a culture of openness and continuous improvement.
7. Meeting menu
Before the meeting, provide a “menu” of topics to be discussed. Participants can order which items they’re most interested in. Then, the host can prioritize the agenda based on those interests.
8. Tech-free minutes
Dedicate the last few minutes of the meeting to a tech-free discussion. You can even have your team turn their cameras off to reduce screen fatigue and change up the conversation.
9. Virtual background challenge
For less serious meetings or team check-ins, encourage participants to use a video background related to a shared theme. An example could be favorite vacation spots. This is a great way to spark conversation and connect as a virtual team.
10. Visual recap
Use a shared digital whiteboard to summarize action items and responsibilities at the end of the meeting. Visual recaps are great for clarity and accountability.
How to have fewer meetings
Successful async culture defaults to async and meetings become a last-resort option when you can't find any async practices as a valid substitute. They should not be your first response.
Meetings are synchronous. And as such, they aren’t the most efficient or productive use of anyone’s time. And they’re notoriously annoying. How many times has the meeting that could have been an email passed through your feed? So one major way to improve your async culture is to have fewer meetings.
Job is the Co-founder and CEO of Remote. But he also happens to have over a decade of experience leading and managing fully-remote, global teams in a fast-growth operating environment. We've collected some practical advice from him to help you learn how to reduce the number of meetings for your team members.
Never meet just to share information
“Never have a meeting just to share information. Do that by chat, email, video message with a tool like Loom , record an audio message through Yac , or even revert to snail mail if you can avoid an in-person meeting!
Better yet: write the information somewhere centrally within a transparent database like Notion and just link to that with an FYI for relevant stakeholders.”
There's no reason for everyone to sync up just to learn something. Information sharing is one of the easiest async practices to master. Take the information and put it in a place where everyone can access it on their own time. Boom. Done.
This saves time and reduces team frustration. That's why you'll find so many quality products out there to help remote teams share information.
Never start a new recurring meeting
The best way to update or start the schedule of a recurring meeting is to remove the need to do so.
“Only do recurring meetings if you see week after week that you need to have a meeting. Make a point to reevaluate the need for that recurring meeting on a recurring basis.”
A recurring meeting is essentially a habit. And we all know how hard it is to break a habit. The best way to quit smoking is not to start in the first place. And the same applies to meetings.
Yes, sometimes you do need a recurring meeting, but these should be the exceptions rather than the rules. And you should build the assumption that this meeting isn’t indefinite into the very fabric of the meeting: the agenda.
Always have and use an agenda
A virtual meeting without an agenda is like driving to a new place without your phone or a sat-nav. You may get there eventually, but it’s going to take a lot longer and you might get a little stressed along the way.
Meetings without agendas start slow, meander around, and often fail to accomplish nothing. It’s a poor use of synchronous time.
“Always have an agenda for a meeting, and require everyone to contribute to it, in advance.”
The agenda should be in a public place where everyone has access. Then all concerns will be dealt with efficiently in the meeting. If you want to talk about it, put it on the agenda.
But isn’t this a list of how not to have meetings? This sounds like a way to have better meetings.
The second part of Job's advice on this point is to use the agenda to reduce your meeting times. An empty agenda gives you different information. An empty agenda tells you when to cancel a meeting.
If nothing is on the agenda a few minutes before your meeting, cancel it!
"Hi folks, I see nothing on the agenda, so I'm cancelling the meeting" “
Meetings without time limits could last forever. You can't afford to waste the time of your team members. Set a time limit. And make those time limits as small as possible.
“Keep your meetings to max 25 minutes and aim to end early. The five extra minutes are buffer in case you have another meeting after.”
Say no to external meetings
You may be confident with async work and successfully streamlining your meeting schedule to just the most essential meetings.
But not all people and companies have caught up. And some of those external collaborators are going to want to meet with you. And you need to say no without insulting them to default to your company's remote-first async culture.
So be ready with an explanation to accompany your no.
“Have a template to refuse meetings with external people, so you can easily say no. For example:
‘We're super busy at @remote , so I prefer to do this async. Happy to setup a meeting if we feel the need after exchanging a few messages, but I think we should be able to cover off what we need to.’”
Phase out existing meetings
If you already have too many meetings, don't despair!
Be proactive, take ownership, and find a way to gradually reduce the volume of meetings for everyone in your team. You can be the catalyst for effective remote-first policy change.
“Make it a goal to remove existing meetings. Everyone will love that. Next meeting you have, add a point to the agenda:
How can we get rid of this meeting?
Do that until the meeting is gone.”
Try no-meeting experiments
Get curious and figure out new ways to go meeting-free.
“Replace meetings with experiments:
try to do async video
try async audio
try emailing each other
try doing a Slack standup
You can always go back to having a meeting, but you won't know whether the alternative works until you've tried it.”
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And who knows? You might start a remote communication revolution.
Limit your availability
Fill your schedule with things you need to be doing so that meetings can’t creep in. Starve your meetings and they’ll waste away.
“Block time off to do deep work/other things and never allow meetings to happen there. Google calendar's OOO function works well for this, as it auto-rejects any events during this time.”
Keep work talk and fun talk separate
Of course, one big benefit to having meetings is getting to talk to each other, to hang out and chat, even if it’s virtually on Zoom or another platform. But then things get muddy.
Work infiltrates fun and fun infiltrates work. Successful workplaces have both. So schedule both. Work meetings for work talk and chats for, you know, chatting.
“Another one, from another Remote employee: avoid agenda-less 'coffee chats' that are actually work conversations.
Instead, make dedicated time to have a structured conversation (with an agenda), or set time aside for an unstructured coffee chat to relax and socialize.”
Make the most out of your remote meetings
You now see both sides of remote meetings — how they can either drive or sap productivity.
With these best practices for running meetings and our CEO’s tips to avoid unnecessary ones, you’re well on your way to better work.
At Remote, we’re a global HR platform. We help companies hire, manage, and pay their entire team.
Explore our blog to gain more insights into modern work. Or you can book a call with one of our thoughtful staff members to learn more about how we can help power your team.
