Every other clickbait business article these days is about in-office versus remote versus hybrid. My company is currently taking the stance that we will all be in-office on Tuesdays and Thursdays starting in April, which is going to be a huge change. Our offices are highly distributed, and ~15% of our workforce is remote. So, I expect a lot of hybrid meetings in my future. In this post, I’ll give my tips for running hybrid meetings (where “hybrid” means that some people are co-located and some are not).

My top tip for running hybrid meetings is don’t. Just don’t do it. Don’t gather 5-6 people in a big room with bad acoustics and shove the 2 remote people on the screen in the back where they can’t see anything and pretend like this is a perfectly reasonable way to collaborate. This is the worst. It is much better to have everyone on equal ground joining independently. Invest in some headsets and join from your desks.

If you MUST run a hybrid meeting, elevate the remote experience – otherwise, you risk relegating your remote co-workers to a second-class status. Remember, they can’t read the same small physical cues in the room, and they’ll potentially have a bit of latency, so it is much harder for them to just “jump in” to a conversation. Here are a few ways to elevate the remote experience:

1. Designate one of the remote people to be a co-facilitator. Depending on the meeting, this person can do everything from being the person who speaks up about video/audio issues to running full activities for the other remote folks. For a typical, non-workshop meeting, ask this person to be the go-to for solving technical problems (this will likely require they have “host” status in your video conferencing tool), speaking up if it’s hard to hear or see people in the room, and generally be the advocate for other remote people.
2. Remote people talk first. In any discussion where people are taking turns talking, simply ask the remote people to go first. This is a small thing, but so often they can be forgotten or tacked onto the end as an afterthought.
3. Use digital-first tools. Online whiteboards have come so far. Like any facilitator, sticky notes and whiteboards and flipcharts have a special place in my heart, but I think my time of running meetings with these physical tools is over. Digital whiteboards are equally accessible by all meeting attendees (assuming that the co-located attendees all have laptops), are packed with useful features (e.g. built-in dot voting and timers), and persist after the meeting. No more taking awkward pictures of a giant whiteboard before painstakingly taking down every sticky note!

Lastly, ensure that your meeting room’s AV setup is working and try to pick rooms where remote folks can hear and see everyone well. Giant boardrooms with one screen at one end are typically hard to set up for good sound and video, so avoid these if you can. Make sure that the screen showing the remote people is part of the group and not looking at anyone’s back. If you’re facilitating or running the meeting, especially make sure that everyone both in the room and online can see your face. One idea that my team is going to try is to bring laptops with us into the meeting room and everyone joins video from our computers but only room audio, so that we’re all still individual zoom squares with the remote people. I’m unsure how well this will work, but I’ll try it in April and report back!

Hybrid meetings can go well if you are willing to put in the work and preparation to ensure equitable experiences for everyone. If you’re not willing to do the work or don’t have time, go back to tip 1: don’t have a hybrid meeting!