Should turning on cameras and microphones in meetings be mandatory?

Employers also have certain opinions about performance: 93% say they are generally less engaged in their work overall, and about two in five believe that workers who are on mute or off-camera entirely are browsing the internet or social media (43%), or texting or chatting (40%).

People are feeling more detached amid the pandemic, according to a report released in September.

And business leaders’ level of trust in their workers is dropping. Executives estimate they completely trust an average of 61% of their staff to be able to work remotely, down from 66% in 2021, according to Vyopta. Those that say they trust 75% to 100% of their staff to work remotely dropped more dramatically, from 46% in 2021 to just 30% in 2022.

Fault of management?

However, many executives admit their company is not doing a good job of facilitating engagement, found Vyopta’s survey of 200 US executives in March.

In fact, nearly half of US executives (46%) say they are not providing the tools to allow their workers to be as committed as their in-person counterparts.

Nearly half (49%) believe that C-level executives bear the greatest responsibility for increasing employee engagement.

There seems to be a disconnect between workers’ and leaders’ perception of senior leadership in the hybrid model, according to another survey.

Plethora of meetings

All companies (100%) have taken steps to encourage greater collaboration between primarily remote employees and their in-person counterparts since the start of the pandemic, according to Vyopta.

Most (54%) say their company established channels on messaging apps such as Slack or Teams to encourage further collaboration between colleagues, while half required more participation on virtual calls/meetings (50%) and instituted formal training on remote collaboration (50%).

But the increase in virtual meetings may be taking its toll. Nearly half of business executives (48%) cite too many meetings as a reason why employees do not talk during virtual meetings, saying they had too many calls that could’ve been an email. And 47% say not speaking up is a habit that has developed among their junior staff.