Participants in audio conferences tend to zone out and multitask because they feel disconnected from the other members in the meeting. With video, however, there’s pressure to maintain “virtual eye contact”, translating to superior levels of engagement.
When each conference member is visible, you’re inclined to use the communication skills we’ve all practiced in face-to-face conversations.
Reduced commuting time is one of the most obvious but significant benefits of video conferencing. In-person meetings with suppliers, clients, and satellite offices can take up valuable hours of your day; even an hour-long meeting can quickly eat up an entire morning when accounting for travel time, making it a frustrating and inefficient activity.
And if sustainability is a mandate in your organization, teleconferencing is a far greener alternative than in-person meetings.
Not only is travel time-consuming, but it’s also expensive. People often travel great distances for training, conferences and business meetings, and in most cases, these in-person communications can be accomplished via video conferencing. Save the money you would spend on business travel and put it toward other business priorities.
Research has shown that humans process visual information more quickly and accurately than text and audio. Therefore, when you have a meeting via video conferencing, your attendees will retain more information and comprehend it more effectively than they would if you held the meeting via audio.
Teams are becoming increasingly geographically separated for several reasons. Freelancers and even permanent staff may be working from home, some are contractors working from other continents, and some are simply on the road for business purposes. But vast distances don’t matter when you can bring your team together via video conferencing, either for regular meetings or spur-of-the-moment check-ups.
Need a quick answer to a tricky question? Instead of sending an email to your colleague and hoping for an answer tomorrow, connect for a quick video conference conversation and use a screen-share function to move on with your project.
It’s often challenging to coordinate busy schedules and bring staff together for in-person meetings. Video conferencing allows the kind of flexibility that can boost meeting attendance rates, and record the discussion for non-attendees.