During the Omicron wave, many employees are working from home again. If the day is packed with online meetings, it gets on your nerves. Why is that? And what helps against that?
If the entire working day is filled with video meetings, exhaustion at the end of the day is almost inevitable. That says psychologist Christina Heitmann from the Institute for Work and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance (IAG).
It is known from studies that this is due, for example, to sitting still for hours in front of the focus of the camera, says Heitmann about the triggers. But it's also exhausting when you constantly see yourself on the screen and feel like you're being watched at the same time. A lack of small talk and technical problems add to the tiring factors.
Long-term online meetings can then lead, for example, to concentration problems, impatience, irritability, but also to headaches or back pain. The phenomenon was given the name "zoom fatigue" during the corona pandemic.
"Zoom" stands for all video service providers such as Microsoft Teams, Jitsi or GoToMeeting. "Fatigue" is French for tiredness or exhaustion.
In order not to leave meetings completely exhausted, digital meetings should above all be well prepared and organized. Heitmann emphasizes the importance of good moderation, a clear daily structure and sufficient breaks.
It is also important to keep the meetings as short as possible. For example, events that would have lasted a whole day as face-to-face events should be better divided into shorter units over several days in the digital.
The DGUV recommends that anyone who is distracted by constantly seeing themselves or others can also change the screen view. Your own video can usually be hidden or simply covered with a post-it. Most tools also offer a speaker view, so at times only the presenter is visible.
If necessary, it can also be clarified whether participants can deactivate their cameras in different situations. For example, when everyone is mainly looking at a presentation anyway.
