Spice It Up: How to Make Your Zoom Calls More Engaging
Imagine this: it’s Thursday afternoon, and you’re considering how to spend your weekend after another arduous week of work. “Maybe some sleep will–,” you get cut off mid-thought as you snap back to the Zoom call actively going on in front of you.
“Oh right, it’s the awards day – that’s what I’m here for.” You hear your name get called out – you’ve won Most Improved Employee of the Month! Everyone hits the party reaction on Zoom and some applaud on mute, but it doesn’t feel as uplifting as it should, nor does it snap you out of your tiredness. “Thank goodness my camera is off!”
This is not a promising start to the awards meeting. How can we avoid creating an impression like this among employees?
Your Zoom call needs levity!
What you need is some levity! Before we continue, let’s define levity: it is an uplifting and/or pleasurable interaction between people that lacks tension and anxiety. The three aspects of levity are buoyancy (organic interactions), amusement (room to inject humor or entertainment into your work), and edification (the authentic support or celebrating of others). Let’s walk through what levity would look like when added to this scenario.
Firstly, the traditional workplace doesn’t always feel like the place to have casual conversations; after all, it is a place where professionalism is valued above all things. However, adding levity, and specifically buoyancy, to your workplace is not a zero-sum game where more buoyancy subtracts from professionalism! Rather, it can enhance the ease with which you discuss workplace matters. We are not machines, and especially right now, there are a lot of stressors bubbling under the surface. Some days, it’s okay to let the sidebar about what you all had for dinner yesterday continue for a few more minutes.
Try this Award Ceremony Icebreaker
In terms of our scenario, your Zoom call company awards day should have started off with an icebreaker activity of some sort. For example: “Think of your favorite award that you have ever received, and (if you have it) go get it to show the rest of us. Afterwards, tell us why that award is so significant to you.”
Moments like that in the workplace provide room for people to inject slivers of themselves into their teams. These icebreakers can be related to the topic (after all, talk about awards begets more talk about awards) or not; that part is up to you. What’s important is that you get an opportunity to share who you are to make the rest of the interaction, whether it’s a meeting or an awards day, more meaningful.
Make the Meeting Fun Without Needing to Apologize for Offense Later
Next up is amusement, which can feel like a difficult one to add to your workplace! After all, we all have different senses of humor. “I don’t want to say something that offends someone.” “How would HR react to me saying this?” “I don’t even think I’m funny.”
Let’s consider an example. After each shift, my supervisor at work encourages everyone on the team to either send her a meme that represents how we’re feeling or a picture of something that we’ve made (e.g. food). This is an excellent way to inject levity in two ways: one, through the sharing of things that we as employees find enjoyable or humorous, and two, by increasing the level of trust and comfort with our supervisor. Sometimes stale workplace environments can shift drastically with these small changes.
Our scenario could do with some songs to accompany each award winner or room for each award recipient to give a not-so-serious acceptance speech in 30 seconds or less. Engaging your staff in this sort of way will likely increase your job satisfaction (and subsequently commitment) levels, thereby making you more productive and ready to improve the bottom line.
Lead with Gratitude
Last but not least, we come to edification! The awards ceremony itself can serve as a source of that, but more importantly, edification should be built into the fabric of the workplace. This can range from being authentically thanked by your supervisor for completing a task on time to getting an end-of-year bonus, or from taking a few minutes to shout out high-achievers in team meetings to getting guidance about how to improve something. Over time, your show of gratitude will keep you and your coworkers motivated and aware of where you stand.
Engaging others online isn’t easy; believe me, I know. However, it is still possible to celebrate performance and stay connected to your team even when you’re miles away.
About the author
Hello! I’m Henri Maindidze. I’m really passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion through the lenses of recruitment methods, organizational culture, and assessment design and implementation. I enjoy conducting statistical analyses and gaining a better understanding of the spaces that I occupy from a data-driven perspective.
