35 Of The Funniest Quarantine Conference Calls Gone Wrong
Coronavirus has us confined to our homes, and we have to work and study online. For some people, it's business as usual, but for the rest of us, it needs a lot of adjusting to.
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Not only do we have to make sure that everything is plugged in where it's supposed to ( yes, I know now that microphone goes into the little socket with the microphone icon), but also make sure that our background is alright.
And after we setup everything correctly and give ourselves a pat on the back for a job well done, we can finally make that important conference call. And then our spouse goes butt naked behind our back…
This is just one of the examples from my "Things that can and will most certainly go wrong during a conference call" manual I am preparing. Thankfully, I am not the only one, as the following posts will prove:
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Don't let these humorous examples deter you from video-calling your coworkers. "Most creativity is done in face-to-face environments," Nicholas Bloom, an economics lecturer at Stanford University, said. "It encourages you to be ambitious and motivated. Full-time at home can be pretty miserable. Most people don’t enjoy it, you know, week in week out."
The specialists calculated that, overall, productivity will be down significantly. "I think even if this all returns to normal, there’s going to be a long-run cost. 2020 is going to be the year of lost innovation. If you look 10 years from now, there’s going to be a hole in new patents and new products and new ideas and great inventions that just didn’t happen in 2020, 2021. Think of scientists or engineers. How can they work properly at home? They’re being sent home, but I suspect they’re really not being very constructive."
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Bloom says that the most important thing we all can do to counteract this is to restore social contact, preferably through video conferencing, "For example, the whole group can meet for a 30-minute video chat at 11:00 every day to catch-up on their personal situation, chat about the news or life in general — no work talk."
As for individual interactions, Bloom stated that managers should try to spend 10 minutes video-talking personally to each of their employees each morning and afternoon. "This is time-consuming but critical for keeping employees happy and productive through the next few months."