Just because it works, doesn’t mean you can’t improve. As a business owner, innovation is in your blood, but change can sometimes be hard. If you have a large or small company, the wheels of change start with you and your attitude. By taking the time to ask your team how they feel about certain company aspects, you can learn a great deal about what to change and even how to do it. What if one of the biggest complaints your employees have is the boring meetings and the number of them in any given week? What could you do to fix it and would you know where to start?
Necessary Evils
It’s common knowledge that meetings are a necessary part of every company. There has to be a meeting of the minds in any given project, but could you make the meetings more effective? If so, what could you do this week to start? As they are part of the business world, meetings don’t have to consume the team’s day and many would prefer a quick meeting and to be able to get back to work.Video meetings can accomplish this goal. For those in the meeting, not being able to do other tasks while waiting or not being able to showcase your work due to a lack of technology can be frustrating. With video meetings, screens can be shared and sometimes multi-tasking can be done. There is no reason why the entire team has to sit in a conference room, waiting for the presenter to show up and then not gain any added knowledge from the meeting. Why not have the appropriate personnel in the meeting and have it available via a video meeting for the rest? It can be recorded and watched at a later date.
Convenience over Convention
Meetings have customarily been held in rooms where notes are taken, presentations given, and lots of water bottles emptied but is there a better way? Just because it has been done this way for years doesn’t mean it has to continue. Video meetings provide the same information but they do it in a way that is convenient for those on the team. If a team member is working from home for any reason, they can still be in on the meeting. The presenter can give it from their own location, saving their own travel time and hassle while the team sits at their own stations and discusses the project. Your team works hard and may not have time to transfer their work to the server before the meeting or may not have a section worked through, what if the rest of the team could see the exact problem spot? They could offer advice and workarounds to complete the project.
Types of Businesses that Benefit
While not all businesses can be run through video meetings, there is not one group of people that won’t benefit from the face-to-face communication and cohesion that these types of meetings can produce. Here are some examples of how every business can benefit from video meeting capabilities:
- Service Based Business: Yes, your teams have to be dispatched but what if they run into a problem that needs the advice of other team members or even your own opinion? They can do a quick video meeting and show you the issue rather than trying to explain it. This will avoid unnecessary costs, unhappy customers, and frustrated service techs. By giving them the ability to communicate quickly and effectively, work can go faster. They may have a picture of the problem or the parts number and it’s easier to send it through video meetings and the project can be completed faster with the information being relayed.
- Product Based Business: Your team may be out completing sales calls but what if there is inclement weather or their principle can’t make the meeting? Your sales team can have video meetings with their clients and potential clients to keep business running rather than having to put everything to a stop for small problems. If your business is seen as progressive, those who are forward thinkers themselves will be more apt to buy your product over the door-to-door sales type person.
- Software Based Business: Because your team is constantly working and creating, video meetings are crucial to their success. One misunderstood line of code or text can throw off the entire project and render it unworkable until the problem is fixed. It can take time away from the goal and also decrease team morale. This is one the businesses where screen shots are very important. One programmer may see something on their machine differently and the designer is confused as to what they are seeing. With a quick screen shot, both parties can walk through the problems and solve them.
Your team members want to reach their goals and in turn, increase business. After all, if the business is successful, their jobs are more secure. Through the simple use of video meetings, you can give them the added benefit of instant communication and the ease of teamwork that isn’t always available in companies.
