Recently in Employee Morale Category

Many business people have questions about the proper etiquette to use when hosting or participating in a conference call. While many have weighed in on this issue, there is no one set of definitive rules governing proper conduct of a conference event. We would like to offer the following suggestions as guidelines for consideration by anyone required to host/moderate or requested to participate on a conference call.

Guidelines for hosts / moderators:

Surprising your conference call participants with questions can result in embarrassing delays as they search for an appropriate response. Fortunately, these awkward moments can be prevented entirely and for all time by having conference event moderators adopt the practice of alerting participants in advance of their required contribution to the group's discussion. Like all good habits, adopting this practice requires discipline and practice. One respected approach identifies seven basic steps that we have applied to the circumstances of a conference event moderator:

In its early days, teleconferencing industry technology required that Conference Service Providers schedule their customers' conference calls in advance then greet each arriving participant before placing and announcing them onto the conference call. All that changed with the arrival of “Toll Free Reservationless Conference Calling” in the mid-1990s! Conference users can initiate a conference event today at their earliest possible convenience and allow participants to join the event immediately after entering the correct conference code.

Meetings held on audio, web and video conference calls are one of the common ways that many of us get work done on the job. We may discuss issues, share new information and make important decisions in meetings. However, conference calls can also be one of the ways that time is wasted in the workplace. A timed agenda can be a great way of keeping meetings on track and making sure that meetings not only begin and end on time, but that each topic also gets its just allotted time. We believe that the use of a timed agenda can also serve as a helpful training and recognition opportunity that can remove the burden placed upon the conference call moderator or host for developing and managing the conference meeting's timed agenda. These opportunities are highlighted in bold print below.

To quote Benjamin Franklin, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This saying has significant relevance when considering the value of conducting conference calls on a fixed schedule basis. Many of Two Rivers Conferencing's clients conduct daily, weekly or monthly conference calls attended by management team members as a way to “manage by talking around” the recurring issues and challenges that these team members share in common. They find that, through these scheduled calls, they can very effectively assist one another in permanently resolving issues. Examples include:

A long-time customer of Two Rivers Conferencing recently shared a story with us about a recent conference call they hosted that was very different from the day-to-day business conference calls they regularly attend. Because this story deals with something that I think many of us can relate to, we want to thank the customer for sharing it with us and allowing us to share it with you. Because we can't tell their story any better, we've posted the complete letter below.

If you are looking for recent industry trends and data on work-place telecommuting, look no further than the July 2012 article in the Industry Market Trends (IMT) blog at ThomasNet.com News: Working Together by Working Apart: The Telecommuting Culture by Ilya Leybovich, which very nicely summarizes a wealth of data on telecommuting from many different sources, including an Ipsos/Reuters poll of over 11,000 people in 24 countries, including the United States. Here is just a small sampling from that January 2012 survey that reflects impacts on worker efficiency and employee morale: