I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard in organisations recently how much people hate being in virtual meetings or training.  Even though the technology is getting better and better, it seems that there is a need to really think about how to make virtual meetings and training more effective.  Given we are working strictly in an auditory mode with some limited visuals (usually death by powerpoint), I began to think about other auditory media, and how they work.

It led me to a discussion with a colleague who works in community Radio.  I explained to her that in many virtual meetings and training, participants are distracted, disinterested and/or disengaged.  They frequently are doing other work during the session, and may only be giving at best 50% of their attention to the call.

She said this is not unlike radio in that often it is on in the background while people are doing other things.  The trick is to get it into the foreground!  She said, in radio we do this by the music we play, the comments we make and the callers we take.  We are trying to get people to "tune in", even if it is for just a few minutes. 

So, the real question is, how do we get virtual meetings and training to be in the foreground, rather than the background?  How do we, in effect, distract people from their “work” so they can tune into the session?

Continuing to take the lead from Radio, I believe there are three things we need to consider:

Announcer - In radio, it’s their job to use their language, style and material to engage with the listening audience.  In a corporate setting, this would be the meeting host or expert delivering the training.  

Producer - In radio, it’s their job to find guests, develop content and design segments.  In a corporate setting this would likely be the facilitator of the meeting, or the learning & development designers.

Techie - In radio, it’s their job to have the right technology, ensure it is working and fix any problems.  In a corporate setting this would be your IT function who not only makes decisions about what is the right technology to use, but would be the support and trouble shooters when things don’t quite go well to according to plan.

In reality, it’s likely you won’t have the luxury of a team of people doing this, however, I believe if you are really interested in making virtual work, you will need to be considering these three elements to ensure that you have the right content to engage your audiences, and that you are thinking creatively about how you can use the technology to bring the material to life, and finally a focus on using the technology to really connect the audience to the speaker.