Video conferencing
What Germans do secretly during meetings
Video meetings have been even more widespread than before since the beginning of the corona pandemic.
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Since the beginning of the corona pandemic, video conferences have been part of everyday life for many. The online meetings can be so boring …
Video conferencing has been common practice for years. Due to the corona pandemic, the online meetings became part of everyday life for many employees who had nothing to do with them before. The problem for many people: video conferencing can be extremely boring. But what can you do to pass the time or get out of the meeting as soon as possible?
Children, internet problems and a dead battery
According to a recent survey conducted by the technology company Cisco and the opinion research institute Civey among 1,000 participants in July 2021, around a third of those surveyed found at least 60 percent of the video conferences to be boring. Also around 60 percent simply sit out the meetings, but German employees can also imagine a wide variety of escape strategies in order to end a video conference as soon as possible.
Possible excuses could therefore be to fake connection problems (17 percent), invent another meeting (7.1 percent) and claim to have an empty battery (2.7 percent). Others take a particularly long time to accept a parcel (1.5 percent), complain of stomach aches or headaches (1.2 percent), open the window despite street noise (1.8 percent) and let the children burst into the room (1 percent).
What can you do against boredom?
While half of the respondents stated that they had never done anything else during a meeting, the other half also used the time for other activities from time to time. According to this, private reading (25 percent), cooking or eating something (24 percent) and online shopping (20 percent) help against boredom. 16 percent had already bathed, showered or used the toilet during a call – and others admitted that they had already taken a nap (7 percent) or watched TV (6 percent).
In order to make video conferences more pleasant, 50 percent of users would like a function for noise suppression. 36 percent would like to use the automatic generation of meeting minutes, 25 percent would like HD video quality and 23 percent would like to limit the speaking time of participants.