The best, and worst, days to organise virtual team meetings

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No surprises that Mondays and Fridays aren't favourites, with three in four respondents calling for a no-meeting day per week.

Virtual meetings have become customary in our daily working lives. So much so that 95% of workers surveyed by Passport Photo Online indicated that they attend online meetings on a regular basis.

The study gained responses from 1,020 respondents in the US to gauge their overall experiences with online calls in 2022.

*Note: While this survey was conducted across respondents from the US, HRO believes the findings would be applicable to the wider audience in Southeast Asia.

On average, most respondents spend one to two hours daily in online calls (37%):

1. One to two hours (37%)
2. Three to four hours (23%)
3. 31–59 minutes (17%)
4. Five hours or more (12%)
5. Up to 30 minutes (11%) 

With all this time spent in virtual meetings, 88% of respondents indicated they’ve experienced virtual meeting fatigue at least once since switching to remote work. Such fatigue could lead to exhaustion, social detachment, and low productivity.

In that vein, over half of the respondents agree (57%) that they could do their jobs as well, or even better, with fewer virtual meetings. Over three-quarters (77%) indicated that they have gotten invitations to virtual calls irrelevant to them, while 69% agree or strongly agree that their boss is terrible at running virtual meetings.

As such, there seems to be a general consensus that employees could do with fewer virtual meetings — 76% of employees agree or strongly agree there should be one day a week with zero meetings. 

Interestingly, respondents indicated that the best days for calls are Tuesdays (29%), Thursdays (26%), and Wednesdays (20%). Conversely, the worst are Mondays (35%) and Fridays (31%).

Virtual meeting habits 

To no one's surprise, the biggest pet peeve for meeting attendees was an unstable internet connection, with 50.2% of the votes. This was closely followed by echoes/reverb (49.42%), and too much background noise (49.1%). 

The full list is as follows: 

1. Unstable internet connection (50.2%)
2. Echo/reverb when someone is speaking (49.42%)
3. Too much background noise (49.41%)
4. Not paying attention or losing track of what’s being said (48.92%)
5. Forgetting to mute or unmute (48.63%)
6. Barking dogs / Meowing cats (48.53%)
7. Coming unprepared (48.13%)
8. Bringing your cat or dog to a meeting (47.26%)
9. Chewing gum on camera (47.05%)
10. Attendees talking over each other (46.96%)
11. Being late (46.08%)
12. People who won’t turn their videos on in an obvious camera-on meeting (45.98%)
13. Zooming and driving (45.88%)
14. Eating on camera (45.78%)
15. Fidgeting - e.g., playing with an AirPods case, twiddling thumbs (45.09%)

Photo / Shutterstock