I would never have thought of this one. Since people were, and some still are, working from home, they still had to make it to some meetings. Think of the many applications which allow you to meet virtually; Cisco WebEx, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, Skype, Slack, and of course, Zoom. By-the-way, these are just some of the more well-known applications.
If you are in business, think of some of the virtual meetings that start and what you usually hear during the meeting. “Everyone please mute your mic if you are not speaking,” “Is everyone here,” “Can you hear me,” “Please turn your cameras on,” “please turn your cameras off,” “could you please stop your dog from barking and turn your mic off,” “we will need to wait until {someone} is here; they are usually a little late.” The most embarrassing one I have heard is from a friend, “Please sit back down Bob, you forgot your pants for this morning’s meeting.” If you have attended online meetings because of Covid, I am sure you can share your own stories.
All of that joking about virtual meetings aside, they are a big money saver. Many companies have found that people work longer hours and harder than when in the office. Some companies have decided to let many of their employees work from home full time or a mixed schedule of some days at home/some at the office. I will not get into all the hows and whys, but you can Google for that info and see for yourself. A company I am familiar with has cut back by half on their office space leasing by currently allowing many of their people to work from home. Business people used to need to fly to meetings in other parts of the country. Now they can stay at home or their local office and have productive meetings.
And the issue I wanted to share with you; “Zoom Fatigue” named after the number one virtual meeting app used worldwide. Zoom Fatigue has not been researched to any great level at this point; however, people have been reporting to their doctors’ several consistent issues. The problems reported comprise tired eyes, headaches, muscle tension and pain in the neck and shoulders, a hard time staying awake during the work day regardless of the amount of sleep at night, difficulty focusing on one task for long periods of time and the one that I blamed for observable problems for me, increase in appetite including snack munching.
There are two thoughts as to what causes fatigue. The first is staring at one spot on the screen for too long as a person speaks. The other is when eyes have to change focus quickly to different areas to keep up. Closeness to the monitor can cause more eye stress. So, notebook computers can cause more Zoom Fatigue. A workable solution for this could be to place the monitor further away from the face.
Another helpful piece of advice that I read is to have shorter and fewer meetings. Of course, those two were always my favorites. I have found that I really do not have many of these issues; although I have been in many, many online meetings. I tried to leave my camera off unless asked otherwise so that I do not have to stare at the screen.
Fortunately, Zoom Fatigue is so far a temporary phenomenon but it can be a real problem, causing employees to feel exhausted after using any virtual meeting application, so do not blame it all on Zoom just because or the name.