Make painful Teams meetings a thing of the past

The sound of a screeching cat almost pierces your eardrums through someone’s unmuted microphone. In a colleague’s glasses you see the reflection of the Instagram logo as you deliver (in your humble opinion) a genius-level insight on how amazing excel formulas are. Your boss joins your call ten minutes late, interrupts you, and proceeds to deliver a 35-minute monologue on dialogue.

Remote working has many benefits, but virtual meetings are rarely one of them. I however refuse to accept that the introduction of webcams and seeing my colleagues’ questionably filled bookcases represents the death of human communication. Embracing this new technology involves disruption and new norms. As workplaces leap forward into near total digital environments, a new six-point code of conduct to overcome points of pain (“you’re muted”) and pleasure (“I actually DID email you about that last week, let me share my screen”) is urgently needed.