Diary and poll study with 849 employees of a global technology company, working from home between mid-April and mid-August 2020. The analysis draws on diaries and poll comments from 372 who raised relevant issues.
849 employeesRecruited from almost all regions, groups and roles of one company, during mandatory working from home.
Diaries and pollsEach was asked for up to 24 guided diary entries in three cycles, plus 10 short polls.
372 analysedThe analysis used the 372 participants who mentioned at least one issue relevant to the study.
Coding tensionsDiaries were coded for the tensions employees described and the strategies used to manage them.
BWhat the study found
Connection at workwhat poll respondents and diarists reported
•Of 198 poll respondents, 79% said spontaneous interaction mattered to them.Self-reported. 37% said these needs were not being met, and 53% said they were.
•Of 123 poll respondents, 76% said indirect connections were the same or weaker than before.Self-reported. For direct connections, 41% said stronger and 36% said weaker.
•Diarists often reported losing connection, especially with colleagues who joined remotely.Some diarists welcomed working without watercooler chat.
Work versus socialitythe main tension diarists described, and how they managed it
•Diarists described a pull between informal social encounters and task-focused meetings.Patchy technology, few models for socialising remotely and treating every encounter as a meeting made the tension worse.
•Switching between work and social time was the most common strategy diarists described.Examples were small talk at the start of meetings and separate social meetings. Enthusiasm faded, partly because the social time was still a video call.
•Over time, many diarists described letting the social side go to get work done.Some preferred meetings without small talk. Others said they felt more productive but less connected, and some became resigned to isolation.
•Holding work and sociality together was the rarest strategy diarists described.Some described it as a wish rather than what happened. The study did not measure how well any strategy worked.
What the paper arguesabout videoconferencing fatigue
•The paper argues fatigue rests on assuming video meetings simulate meeting in person.From that follows a second assumption, that a video meeting is a fixed container for any kind of communication.
CKey takeaway
Video tools may ease videoconferencing fatigue by treating work and social connection as a dialectic tension that teams keep rebalancing. Varied encounters can serve this better than one meeting format for everything.
Made for this site with AI assistance from the verified research brief. It is not the paper's own figure.
Abstract
When COVID-19 led to mandatory working from home, significant blind spots in supporting the sociality of working life—in the moment and over time—were revealed in enterprise video meetings, and these were a key factor in reports about videoconferencing fatigue. Drawing on a large study (N = 849) of one global technology company’s employees’ experiences of all-remote video meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic, we use a dialectic method to explore the tensions expressed by employees around effectiveness and sociality, as well as their strategies to cope with these tensions. We argue that videoconferencing fatigue arose partly due to work practices and technologies designed with assumptions of steady states and taken-for-granted balances between task and social dimensions of work relationships. Our analysis offers a social lens on videoconferencing fatigue and suggests the need to reconceptualize ideas around designing technologies and practices to enable both effectiveness and sociality in the context of video meetings.
Research brief
By Rachel Bergmann, Sean Rintel, Nancy Baym, Advait Sarkar, Damian Borowiec, Priscilla Wong, and Abigail Sellen.
Takeaway: The dialectic tension between getting work done and staying connected is inherent and cannot be designed away. Videoconferencing fatigue arose partly because tools and practices assumed a steady balance, making 'the meeting' a container for everything. Systems should offer recognisably different encounters and let teams experiment with their own balance.
Why this matters
What was known
Videoconferencing has long been assumed to be the next best thing to being there, so when offices closed, meetings moved online and more were added to make up for lost social contact. Research on video had in fact shown mixed results. Given videoconferencing's sensorial richness, it was expected that it could adequately substitute for in-person interaction(§2.2, pp. 4–5)
What this paper adds
Rather than modelling fatigue as inputs and outputs, we read a large diary study through relational dialectics, which treats competing pulls in relationships as permanent rather than as problems to solve. To our knowledge, the dialectic approach has not been brought to bear on video meetings.(§3.3, p. 9)
Who it matters to
Researchers and developers of videoconferencing and collaboration technology first, and through them the users and organisations that run remote and hybrid work. These changes in mindsets are initially intended for researchers and developers-the likely readers of this work-but meant ultimately to propagate across to users and organizations too.(§5.3, p. 23)
Research questions
RQ1: What tensions regarding social connection in work relationships did employees describe as resulting from using video meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic?
RQ2: To the extent that employees described tensions, what strategies did they describe using to manage them?
RQ3: What do these tensions and strategies reveal about videoconferencing fatigue?
RQ4: What does videoconferencing fatigue reveal about the need for either/both practice-based or technological changes in work, workplaces, and videoconferencing technologies?
Method and data
Design
Diary and poll study, analysed qualitatively with a dialectical approach.
Setting
Employees of a single large global technology company during mandatory working from home in the COVID-19 pandemic, recruited through internal mailing lists from almost all regions, groups and roles.
Participants / data
849 participants completed onboarding. The analysis draws on diary data and poll verbatims from a subset of 372 participants who mentioned at least one issue relevant to the research questions. Three polls had n = 198, n = 123 and n = 116.
Duration
Rolling recruitment between mid-April and mid-August 2020. Participants were asked to author up to 24 diary entries in three cycles of eight guided topics, plus 10 short polls.
Analysis
Iterative qualitative coding of the diaries to identify the tensions employees described and how they managed them, assessed against Baxter and Montgomery's hierarchy of strategies. Descriptive statistics from three polls.
Findings
Connection thinned, but not for everyone. Employees of a global technology company, keeping diaries while working from home in 2020, often reported losing social connection with colleagues, especially with those who had joined the team remotely. Some, though, welcomed working without watercooler chat. #
“it seems like it is taking longer to get to know them because we only meet during scheduled meetings”
Work versus sociality. Diarists described one overarching pull between spontaneous, informal social encounters and agenda-bound, task-oriented ones. Patchy technology, the lack of models for socialising remotely, and framing every encounter as a meeting made it worse: #
“meetings were treated as containers for any and most social action, likely as a symptom of the rush to do something, anything, without good means for thinking through what might work best”
Taking turns between work and social time. The most common strategy was switching between the two. Examples were small talk at the start of a meeting, separate social meetings, socialising with some colleagues but not others, or moving social chat to other media. These helped some, but enthusiasm faded, partly because the social activity was still a videoconference: #
“The "quarantine happy hours" are a thing of the distant past (March)”
Many let the social side go. Over time, many settled on getting the work done at the expense of social connection. Some preferred meetings without small talk. Others felt more productive but increasingly disconnected, and some became resigned to isolation. #
“While I do feel more productive, I feel less and less connected to people in my team since we're removing casual chats from the meetings slowly”
Holding both together was rare. Attending to work and sociality at the same time, as complementary rather than competing, was the rarest strategy, and some diarists described it as a wish rather than what actually happened. One praised a team that managed #
“lighthearted, spontaneous interactions without compromising productivity”
Two assumptions behind the fatigue. We argue that these struggles expose two linked assumptions at the heart of videoconferencing fatigue: #
“the assumption that videoconferencing simulates in-person communication, and that, as a result, the assumption that video meetings are static and knowable containers of any and all kinds of communication”
Questions this paper answers
Why did video meetings during the pandemic feel so draining?
Partly for social reasons, we argue. Work practices and tools assumed that video could stand in for being together, and that one meeting format could hold every kind of encounter. As a result, social and task needs ended up competing for the same scheduled slots. (See §4.2, pp. 11–12; §5.2, p. 22.)
Did everyone miss socialising with colleagues while working from home?
No. Many employees of a global technology company, working from home in 2020, reported a loss of social connection, but not all saw it as a problem. In a poll of 198 of them, 79% said spontaneous interaction mattered, yet 53% felt their needs were met and 37% did not. (See §4.1, p. 10.)
Does cutting small talk make meetings more productive?
For some, it felt that way, and a few preferred meetings without it. Others felt increasingly disconnected from their team as casual chat disappeared, and one employee found efficiency-focused meetings more draining than social ones because they felt impersonal. (See §4.3.2, p. 18; §4.3.3, pp. 18–19.)
Is there a right balance between getting work done and socialising?
Not a fixed one, from a dialectical view. The pull between the task and social sides of work relationships is permanent and differs by person, team and moment, so it cannot be designed away. It has to be managed continually, ideally by teams together rather than by individuals alone. (See §4.3.3, pp. 18–19; §5.2, p. 22.)
Quantitative results
Measure
Result
Where
Participants who completed onboarding; subset whose diaries and poll verbatims were analysed
849; 372
§3.1, pp. 7–8
Spontaneous interaction poll (n = 198): spontaneous interaction mattered to them
79%
§4.1, pp. 10–11
Spontaneous interaction poll: needs not being met vs being met
37% not met; 53% met
§4.1, pp. 10–11
Connections poll (n = 123): indirect connections the same or weaker than before
76%
§4.1, pp. 10–11
Connections poll: direct connections stronger vs weaker
41% stronger; 36% weaker
§4.1, pp. 10–11
Meeting types poll (n = 116): remote one-on-one and group socialising rated less effective than in person
60% and 62%
§4.1, pp. 10–11
Contributions and implications
Think beyond 'meetings' and design for a range of recognisable encounters, from small talk and hanging out to decision-making, that look, sound and feel different. we would advocate for the end of one-size-fits-all 'meeting' systems(§5.3.1, p. 25)
Think beyond guidelines and let people and teams experiment with their own encounters rather than assume we know what should be done. the next generation of technology should be designed with the principle of enabling people and teams to experiment with their own encounters(§5.3.2, p. 29)
Guidelines for remote and hybrid meetings should explicitly consider sociality, not only productivity. Our findings suggest the importance of ensuring that sociality is explicitly considered in these guidelines.(§5.3.2, p. 28)
Limitations
Data came from one company, which may limit generalisability, especially since company culture likely affects social support. the choice to limit data collection to one company does risk limiting generalizability(§6, pp. 29–30)
The effectiveness of the strategies was not measured. we did not measure the effectiveness of the strategies that we found(§5.2, pp. 20–21)
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Concepts
Videoconferencing fatigue
Riedl's synthetic definition, which we adopt: somatic and cognitive exhaustion that is caused by the intensive and/or inappropriate use of videoconferencing tools(§2.3, p. 5)
Relational dialectics
An analytic lens that treats competing pulls in relationships as inevitable and ongoing, rather than assuming steady states. An analysis drawing on relational dialectics puts the focus on 'dilemmas and tensions that inhere in relating'(§3.3, p. 9)
The core tension
The single tension running through the diaries: one nuanced but overarching tension between two poles of social encounters, marked by spontaneity and informality and task-oriented encounters, characterized as agenda-bound and formal(§4.2, p. 11)
Pole switching
The most common strategy employees described, within a meeting, across meetings, across relationships or across media: switching between the 'poles' of sociality (maintaining personal connection) and effectiveness (getting tasks accomplished)(§4.3, p. 13)
The myth of video-as-co-presence
The assumption behind Molnar's 1969 promise of 'the next best thing to being there': the myth of video-as-co-presence: that videoconferencing simulates in-person communication(§2.1, p. 3)
How to cite
Rachel Bergmann, Sean Rintel, Nancy Baym, Advait Sarkar, Damian Borowiec, Priscilla Wong, and Abigail Sellen. 2022. Meeting (the) Pandemic: Videoconferencing Fatigue and Evolving Tensions of Sociality in Enterprise Video Meetings During COVID-19. Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-022-09451-6
This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text. Page numbers refer to this PDF.
BibTeX
@article{bergman2022meeting,
author = {Bergmann, Rachel and Rintel, Sean and Baym, Nancy and Sarkar, Advait and Borowiec, Damian and Wong, Priscilla and Sellen, Abigail},
title = {Meeting (the) Pandemic: Videoconferencing Fatigue and Evolving Tensions of Sociality in Enterprise Video Meetings During COVID-19},
year = {2022},
month = {November},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-022-09451-6},
journal = {Computer-Supported Cooperative Work},
doi = {10.1007/s10606-022-09451-6},
}