Make The Most Of Your Small Business Meeting: 3 Tips To Minimize Technology Stress
By Lieven Bertier of Barco
Running your small business isn't easy, but running your meetings should be.
According to an independent study commissioned by Barco -- a global leader in professional meeting room visualization -- participants felt 46 percent more stressed in meetings where the technology provided was difficult to use. Aside from it being a major annoyance, this tech stress actually had a negative impact on meeting length, presentation quality and understanding of the material.
As a small business owner, it's critical to identify pain points in your company -- like tech stress in meetings -- and curb it before it has any impact on your team's productivity and ultimately, your bottom line. The following are a few tips to consider.
Find The Root Cause
To understand tech stress, you first need to determine what the motivator is. Our study uncovered the following as the top three tech issues experienced in meetings:
- Locating connecting wires
- Switching between devices
- Using clickers that control audio and visuals
Trying to tackle these during a meeting caused it to take 36 percent longer. In other words, people spent more time in a hectic meeting environment with lower-quality content.
For small businesses especially, these setbacks can be challenging. Teams are smaller and each employee is already facing the stress of wearing many hats day-to-day. It's crucial to maximize time spent in meetings, in order to preserve often-limited resources.
Consult The Experts
When trying to improve technical difficulties in meetings, IT experts are your most valued resource. These professionals know the best technologies and practices in the industry, and can help you implement them at your small business.
While many small businesses don't have designated IT departments, there are several other ways to get technological advice. Online resources, such as IT forums, enable managers to access cost-effective guidance from the pros. You could also schedule a consultation with a freelance IT expert to decide on the best plan of action for your facility.
These specialists can provide methods to familiarize employees with your current technologies, and strategies to prevent unexpected technology failure.
Invest In Tech-Training
When implementing a new meeting technology, or if you think your team members need a refresher on how to utilize existing tools, host a workshop focused on the functionality of the technology and best practices for utilization. This affords your employees the opportunity to see how to properly use the technology before they present and have a chance to ask questions.
This little bit of preparation goes a long way, in fact, 37 percent of those business professionals studied said that they wished they had more time to become familiar with the equipment before their meetings.
To take things a step further, you can also provide summary materials from the workshop so that your team can revisit the instructions whenever needed.
Reset Your Focus
Now that you know the most common tech issues plaguing meetings and how to properly fix them for your small business, it's time to take action. Then, you can reset focus on what really matters: running your business.
Lieven Bertier is responsible for product marketing and management for the collaboration division of Barco. Lieven started his career as a technical commercial editor at Atos Origin before joining Barco in 1999. Over the last 18 years, Lieven has held multiple roles in branding and marketing management. Based in Belgium, Lieven has led the collaboration team as Global Marketing Manager since 2014.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within this guest post are those of the authors alone and do not represent those of CBS Small Business Pulse or the CBS Corporation. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are verified solely by the authors.
