Are Zoom Meetings a Face-to-Face Meeting?

 

Not everyone would have been expecting that we would be repeating last year’s early messages that we face an uncertain year. Certainly, in Western Australia the first half will be so, depending on border opening dates and the expected Covid Omicron peak. And we have yet to see any of the latest Omicron variant BA.2.

 

Businesses will continue to need to adapt, we believe for quite some time. While many will want to get back to face-to-face meetings as we call it, are Zoom meetings face-to-face? Many would argue not but given the potential for disruption physical face-to-face-meetings can cause many will continue with Zoom meetings for quite some time.

 

While many of us have seen the disruption to supply chains; locally, the recent floods in South Australia have highlighted the issue and protecting a business’s supply chains will be a top priority for many businesses in the future. Globalisation may have been faltering, but what effect will recent events have on the future?

 

We will include Zoom meetings as face-to-face for the time being and encourage our clients to keep their face-to-face skills up.

 

Supply Chain Disruption and face-to-face meetings

 

Why can physical face-to-face meetings dispute the supply chain? The first obvious answer is Covid. Infection can be with the direct meeting participants, but where to from there? The potential is almost incalculable. Tracing is extremely difficult once movement starts. It can spread spider web style from the meeting host site. A meeting member can bring it back thousands of miles before showing signs of infections and then the web can grow from where the infected person lands back at their office.

 

Then the less obvious disruptions start in a business from the isolation it is sensible to undertake. Other colleagues of that person may have their activities slowed down. Deep cleaning and so on. For some companies they may need to turn down deliveries or orders.

 

Salespeople may find meetings harder to attain because it’s easier for the buyer to say no to a physical face-to-face meeting than ask for medical histories and how a company carries out its infection protocols. Falling back to a Zoom request may not then work.

 

Another facet affecting many businesses is the cost of meetings. In a list of the top ten-time wasters from a bygone era was meetings:

 

“A third of time spent in meetings is considered by people in meetings to be a waste of time. 6 weeks per year for most people in business spent sitting in meeting when we could have been doing something else.”

 

Many companies know that the cost of anything they buy includes the cost of buyer/seller meetings. From participant (and organisers) wages to travel time and so on. Add the potential risk and therefore cost of Covid or any other disruptions and this is becoming a consideration for the buyer. Future good customer service may not be dropping tools and rushing to the client!

 

We have moved the Globalisation article.