Every day more employers are sending their employees home to work for the indefinite future. While avoiding your commute is a plus, those who are new to working from home may find unexpected challenges. In this series of blog posts, I explore different challenges working from home presents and ways to overcome them.
From internal meetings with co-workers, direct reports, and supervisors to external meetings with clients and vendors, meetings are a part of everyday life for many office workers. While everyone may be dispersing to their own homes, most meetings must go on. Teleconferences, often the butt of many workplace jokes, are going to be more important than ever.
Remote meetings are more personal when you can see each other. Experts disagree on the exact percentages, but most agree that body language makes up a significant portion of communication. When meetings are left to voice only, the body language element is lost. The good news is that there are a plethora of remote meeting options that allow everyone to turn on their webcam and meet "face-to-face."
Meeting Providers
GoToMeeting
I personally use and love GoToMeeting. GoToMeeting is user-friendly and allows you to share screens as well as webcams. Starting at only $12 / month, GoToMeeting is a great option to consider. The personal plan has enough features to satisfy most people entering the remote meeting world. However, for those looking to share keyboard and mouse control or integrate their meeting tools with their calendar, the business plan has them covered at only $16 / month.
Zoom
Zoom is another quality option. Zoom's personal plan is free but has a 40 minute limit on group meetings. One-on-one meetings have no time limit. Like GoToMeeting, people can share both webcams and their screens. If you need longer group meetings, the pro plan is $15 / month.
Join.Me
When I first started conducting remote meetings, I used Join.Me. At that time, Join.Me had a free option that satisfied my needs for over a year. However, Join.Me has since done away the free version. In order to share webcams, you'll need the pro plan, which costs $20 / month. While this is more expensive than both GoToMeeting and Zoom, some people find it the most user-friendly option of the three.
Webcams
Placement
One thing to consider is webcam placement. Most people who can work remotely already have webcams built into their laptops. That's what I'm using in my new home office, but its placement in your home office may be less than ideal. Some laptops place the webcam at the lower corner of the screen, resulting in the webcam looking up your nose. Other people who use multiple monitors may have their laptops positioned off to the side, resulting in the webcam looking at the side of their faces.
If you find yourself with less than ideal webcam placement, consider purchasing a standalone webcam that you can mount on the top of your primary monitor. At the office where my laptop was docked under my desk, I used a Logitech C930e. It's not the least expensive option out there, but it is high resolution and includes a built-in cover to place over the webcam when it's not in use to prevent accidental video sharing.
Ideally, the webcam should be positioned in front of you at or slightly above eye-level. I have to confess, in my home office, my webcam is slightly below eye-level, but it at least at the top of my laptop screen, so nobody is stuck looking up my nose. I have my laptop position directly in front of my keyboard, but I am enjoying the view out the window it that the shorter screen provides me. I am in full support of anything we can do to make this situation more enjoyable.
Oversharing
With a home office, it's especially important to make sure you don't accidentally turn on your webcam when you aren't planning on video conferencing. Consider where your desk is set up and any other activities you engage in there (such as getting dressed if your bedroom is now serving dual functions). If you are using your laptop's built-in webcam, I suggest closing the lid when you aren't working to avoid accidentally sharing aspects of your personal life.
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