What Business Leaders Got Wrong About Zoom Fatigue

"Back in the dark days of Covid lockdowns, millions of people around the globe brought a new app into their homes and lives to adapt to working at home: Zoom. Five years later, after the collective experience of endless video calls and other pandemic-era stressors led to Zoom fatigue or video call burnout, prompting the creation of guidelines about how to minimize those risks, those on-screen meetings are part of many people's ordinary working lives."

"The scientists' work, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, described extensively interviewing over 100 people who take part in different types of work meetings. Researchers asked about their exhaustion levels, if they were able to take a mid-meeting break, and their more general attitudes about the platform's role in their work lives. One team member, Hadar Nesher Shoshan, a junior professor at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany told news outlet Phys.org that their initial hypothesis was that "zoom fatigue still existed""

"But their investigation came to a startling conclusion that told a very different story. "We found no evidence of the phenomenon," Shoshan said, and in fact, according to their findings, "online meetings are not more fatiguing than in-person meetings." Even more fascinating, from the questions the subjects in the study answered, the researchers concluded that if a Zoom meeting lasts less than 44 minutes, the experience of attending the meeting may even be less exhausting to the attendees than traditional in-person bu"

Zoom became widely adopted during Covid lockdowns as a tool for remote work. Pandemic-era video calls and related stressors prompted concerns about Zoom fatigue and produced guidelines to reduce risks. Hybrid and remote work patterns have made video meetings a routine part of many workplaces. Over 100 people who attend different types of work meetings were extensively interviewed about exhaustion, mid-meeting breaks, and attitudes toward video platforms. The initial expectation was persistent fatigue from online meetings. No evidence of generalized Zoom fatigue was found, and meetings shorter than 44 minutes may be less exhausting than face-to-face gatherings.

Read at Inc