Video Call Etiquette: 52 tips to improve your virtual meeting experience in the age of Zoom

Posted on December 28, 2020, by Michael Kolowich

One thing that’s become clear as this forgettable year has gone on is this: whatever the fate of the pandemic, the virtual meeting is here to stay. Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet have become part of the fabric of how business is conducted and distant friends and families connect. While we all yearn for the blessing of face-to-face human contact, virtual meetings have established a durable place in our lives where and when face-to-face interactions are not possible.

According to a recent survey by the Robert Half staffing firm, more than 78% of professionals participate in video meetings. While 24% of those say the novelty has worn off, the survey identifies a number of technical issues and bad habits as pet peeves that diminish the virtual call experience.

Recently on social media, I asked my friends and colleagues for their thoughts and insights about what participants and hosts can do to make virtual meetings better. They did not hold back! Here are many of their thoughts:

Setting up your Virtual Conference Space

Get a light onto your face – backlit or witness protection looks awful. (Howard L. Morgan)
Place a soft light source above the camera. (Larry LeCain)
Audio volume and quality matter (even more than picture, as it turns out). Services like Zoom have a test-recording and playback feature; use it!
Get a decent microphone…. They’re not expensive. (Steve Edelson)
If you meet from a noisy environment, consider getting a directional microphone, which will help isolate your voice from any distractions around you.
Don’t have the laptop camera look up your nose. Move it to eye level. (Michael Parekh)
If your environment is at all noisy, wear headphones! (Laura Roberts)
Do NOT sit in a rocking chair. Your colleagues may get sea sick. (David Coffin)
RESIST the urge to use a fancy motion video background (still background is fine) – the more pixels are moving in the screen, the more bandwidth is required to show your image and background.
I advise against the Zoom fake backgrounds. If you use one, you have to remain completely immobile when speaking. Otherwise, it will pixelate around your head, body, chair when you move. Also, you can’t leave your seat. If you do, the whole thing pixelates and viewers can see flashes of what you were trying to hide. It’s much better to scout a new location for yourself. (Ann Peckenpaugh Becker)

Before the Call

Allow extra time before any conference to test and find and fix loose connections, bad lighting, misconfigured audio and video, etc. (Jonathan Seder)
Close all the apps and programs you don’t need to share on your computer. (Laura Roberts)
Don’t let people on the same internet connection stream movies or do other things that strain your connection. (Laura Roberts)
Remember: you are still at work. Dress as you would if you were in the office for meetings. (Erin Margaret)
Make sure what clothes you wear are complemented by the background. White shirt neutral wall may be as bad as paisley wallpaper with a Tommy Bahama floral shirt. (Andy Kolowich)
Be careful with wearing patterned or zigzag type stripes on a short or it can look like the shirt is moving. (Susan Murray)
Silence all alerts (including your phone). (Laura Roberts)
If you are on the same call as a member of your household, keep the door closed between you so you don’t get echoes. (Kate Putnam)
Ask your son not to play his drumset in the room right upstairs – before the meeting starts! (personal experience with this one) (Patrick Kinney)
Be familiar with all of your microphones, and make a mindful choice of the one to use. (Jonathan Seder)
Watch the framing! Your head should almost (but not quite) touch the top of the frame – don’t be that person whose head sits at the bottom of the frame with nothing but wall behind.
Have a plan B when time expires on your free account calls. Better, buy a long enough license to allow the meeting to run over if necessary. (Writing from experience.) (Jim Wolper)

Starting the Call

Before clicking on the “Join meeting” button, you’ll be able to see yourself on a small screen. Evaluate your location carefully. (Ann Peckenpaugh Becker)
It helps if everyone agrees on a visual signal that they’d like to speak. Latency can make it awkward and interrupters are rude. So maybe just raise your hand to be seen in the screen. (Deb Besemer)
Let participants know beforehand if you will be recording the session. (Susan Murray)
When you enter a conference call that is already in session, don’t loudly proclaim your entrance. You may be interrupting someone. Also, show up on time or a minute or two early. (Lee Cuthbert)
Do not apologize for not wearing makeup, or anything else appearance-related! To give yourself a confidence boost, go to Settings > Video > Touch up my appearance to smooth things out. (Lindsay Cox)
Sometimes, a computer’s microphones are set at too high an input volume, or a computer’s speakers are too loud, meaning the microphone picks up whatever is coming through the speakers and returns it as feedback. The result is degraded audio for all. Suggestion: At the start of the call, off mute, as someone is talking, check the Participants list for any audio indicators for a person who is not speaking. Ask that participant to turn down their volumes. Of course, the host can also mute that person, but better for people to check this and be aware. (Rebecca Curzon)

During the Call

Work harder than you would in a face to face meeting not just to listen, but to show that you’ve listened: you have to work harder than in a face to face meeting to make interaction feel bi-directional and meaningful. Resist the tendency to take turns broadcasting until time is up. (David Gilmour)
Be on time and be present. Stay to the end, leaving early is a distraction. (Reed Sturtevant)
Don’t try and multitask when on the call, email can wait. Respect your coworkers time and pay attention. (Anne Bala)
Mute your microphone when you’re not speaking – No one wants to hear the dog barking or the baby crying.
Conversely, know how to quickly unmute yourself when it’s your turn to speak.
Before speaking up, identify yourself. (Nikolina Matuzic Pozar)
When sharing your screen, share an individual window, not your whole screen, to avoid showing any embarrassing open windows or notifications. (Lindsay Cox)
When sharing your screen, don’t search on LinkedIn the people in the meeting. (Kathleen Will Mackey)
In larger groups use the chat feature so you don’t forget your question and don’t interrupt. (Adrienne Kolowich Cummings)
Only say nice things about the participants in the chat feature. Snark *always* ends up getting addressed to the wrong person. (David Rollert)
If there are more than about 7 windows on the screen, wave when you begin talking so people know where to look. (Jonathan Yarmis)
Don’t be that person who refuses to use video and just phones it in – part of the virtual meeting experience is sharing facial expressions, gestures, and body language that’s a critical part of communicating effectively.

When You’re the Host

Arrive a minute or two early and open the room, and start on time – your guests will get the message that if they’re late, they may miss something important.
If you are running the meeting, establish at the very beginning how you’d like people to engage so everyone’s on the same page. “Feel free to interrupt me during this presentation”; “If you’d like to speak, please use the Raise Hand feature and I’ll call on you,” etc. This levels the playing field and ensures it isn’t just those who are outspoken and confident on Zoom who have a voice. (Lindsay Cox)
If you are hosting a large call, arrange with another person to watch chat and questions. Don’t try to do it all yourself. You focus on managing the “room”, have someone else respond to questions in chat ( where will the replay be posted, where is the deck hosted, what did I miss) and direct you to issues you ought to address to the group. Distracted call leaders waste everyone’s time and make for a poor user experience. (Janet M. Ryan)
Record the Zoom call to the Cloud. You’ll get an email with a link you can share out as needed. Sending this recording link out with any notes, action items, takeaways, or just simple thank-you for a productive meeting is very appreciated and helps remind everyone what needs to be done. (Lindsay Cox)
Unless the participants are all well known to each other, train attendees to preface their interaction with name, role, location (whatever is relevant to your group. Helps keep everyone on track with what’s going on. (Janet Ryan)
Have agenda ready (possibly share with participants prior to meeting). (Nikolina Matuzic Pozar)
Always send the deck out ahead of time, don’t waste call time on that kind of logistics. (Janet Ryan)
Don’t offer to recap the part of the call someone missed (even later); instead, send everyone the link to the recording. (Janet M. Ryan)
Use breakout rooms to encourage interactive, small-group discussions to avoid people talking over each other in a large group. (Works great for large team trivia too!) (Lindsay Cox)
Open Advanced Settings to find some great advanced features like the whiteboard and annotations. This can be very helpful for diagramming. (Lindsay Cox)
If people join with either the wrong name (using someone else’s computer or account) or just a phone number, change their name under their photo so everyone can keep track of who’s who. (Laura Roberts)

And finally…

Slow down your bandwidth so that each bit is six feet away from the following bit. (Lars Perkins)