Three in four employees admit tuning out during virtual meetings, survey finds

Six in 10 employees said at least half of virtual meeting attendees appear to be multitasking instead of paying full attention.

How many virtual meetings do you have every day? And how focused are you during each call?

New research from people2people Recruitment indicated that Australia's virtual meetings may be facing an attention crisis, with employees increasingly multitasking and disengaging during online discussions.

*While the survey was conducted in Australia, HRO believes the findings remain relevant to our readership in Asia.

The survey of more than 1,200 respondents found that three in four respondents (75%) stop paying full attention during virtual meetings either every time or often, while 61% said at least half of attendees in a typical virtual meeting appear to be multitasking. Just 8% reported never losing focus.

When attention drifts, 40% of respondents said they browse online instead of listening, while 32% use meeting time to complete other work and 6% check messages. Only 22% said they do nothing else during virtual meetings.

Meeting relevance emerges as the biggest issue

According to Suhini Wijayasinghe, Head of HR Solutions at people2people Recruitment, the issue goes beyond attention spans and points to a broader problem with meeting design. Disengagement can happen just as easily around a boardroom table as it can on a video call. Such behaviour can result in missed information, repeated discussions, slower decision-making, and employees leaving meetings without a clear understanding of what was agreed.

Nearly two-fifths (39%) of respondents cited lack of relevance as the main reason they disengage, followed by meetings running too long (29%) and having too many meetings (23%). Notifications accounted for just 9% of distractions.

Older workers most likely to tune out

Segmented by generation, Gen X and Baby Boomers were the most likely to report losing focus during every virtual meeting (59%), compared with 46% of Millennials and 31% of Gen Z respondents. Including those who said they lose focus “often”, the figures rose to 88% for Gen X and Baby Boomers, 76% for Millennials, and 74% for Gen Z.

Different age groups were also found to multitask in different ways. More than half of Gen Z respondents (54%) and half of Millennials (50%) said they browse online during meetings, while 48% of Gen X and Baby Boomers were more likely to continue working on other tasks.

The report suggested employers may need to rethink meetings as the default response to every update, question, or decision. Instead they could focus on shorter meeting times, clearer agendas, fewer attendees, defined decisions and actions, and greater use of written or asynchronous updates.

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