Asynchronous meetings offer major benefits for business leaders, managers, and individual contributors. While the most obvious benefit of asynchronous meetings is tied to time — or, better yet, the lack of dependence on time — there are seemingly endless ways meeting asynchronously can make a positive impact for you or your business.
The benefits that can come to you or your business when moving your meetings from synchronous to asynchronous.
Asynchronous meetings have Clearer Objectives
With a reliance on synchronous meetings, objectives are often messy. This is due to poor planning, including misunderstood business objectives, let alone meeting objectives.
Doodle's 2019 'The State of the Meeting' report showed that, according to 6,500 professionals, the single biggest determinator of a good meeting was setting a clear goal. Yet, that same study revealed that most professionals said poorly organized meetings lead to a loss of focus and confusion.
Asynchronous work, whether it’s through an asynchronous meeting, collaboration, or simple communication, makes it easy for a group of people to set and stick to an objective.
Asynchronous meetings lead to understood expectations and deliverables
With any work product, project, activity, or sprint, there are deliverables. Those deliverables, in synchronous work, often are not fully understood. In fact, a 2016 Gallup study reported that nearly half of all U.S. employees don’t know what is expected of them while at work.
Working asynchronously, whether on an asynchronous meeting platform like Asynchly or using a collaboration or project management tool, deliverables and the expectations behind them are out in the open, agreed upon, and the key towards achieving the effort or asynchronous meeting’s objective.
With asynchronous work, there is no guesswork around “what should I be doing?” or “how can I help?”
There are no time constraints when meeting asynchronously
Asynchronous meetings remove the dependence on time that synchronous meetings so heavily rely upon. With synchronous meetings, all involved need to commit to a time and often a place — be it in person in a conference room or over video or phone conference.
According to Twist.com’s Remote Guide to Team Communication, navigating time zones, is among the biggest challenges of synchronous meetings. Add in the struggles of finding an open time in the ever-filling calendars of your colleagues and managers, and you’ll realize time — or lack thereof — is a major challenge in today’s workplace.
Asynchronous work, whether on an asynchronous meeting platform like Asynchly or using a collaboration or project management tool, allows individuals and teams to work according to their own schedules and priorities. Working asynchronously, a team member can take care of their deliverables early in the morning, late at night, or during a time of the day they feel most effective. This can lead to more engaged, happy, and productive employees.
Asynchronous meetings let all types of personalities shine
Synchronous in-person meetings, video conferences, and phone calls often leave shy, quiet, or introverted people feeling as if they don’t have the platform needed to input their own thoughts, ideas, or recommendations.
Asynchronous meetings put everyone on a level playing field, with respect to organizational hierarchy. This means the quiet but sharp rookie, the introverted expert, and shy but smart contributor feel more comfortable pushing their ideas than they otherwise would in an in-person meeting where the loudest — and often highest paid — voices are the drivers of the discussion.
Asynchronous meetings self-document an on-demand archive of dialog and decisions
Synchronous meetings, whether they’re in-person, video conference, or a phone call, often have a lot of discussion but very few decisions. And, when decisions are made, they’re rarely documented well and accepted among attendees. In a survey by Jabra, respondents said a lack of decision making and follow up were two of the main reasons meetings didn't aide in productivity.
Asynchronous work, whether on an asynchronous meeting platform like Asynchly or using a collaboration or project management tool, organically delivers a history of dialog and decisions. This helps crystalize the contents of the activity for everyone involved and delivers crystal-clear expectations as to what comes next.
Contributors spend less time talking in an asynchronous meeting, leaving more time to actually do important work
According to a Wrike business survey, employees with the most meetings per week are significantly more likely to be unhappy with their work management process. As a business leader or manager, that number cannot make you happy about the productivity of your team.
With asynchronous work like asynchronous meetings, collaboration, or communication, employees spend more time working and less time talking about working. Asynchronous meetings lead to enhanced communication around singular topics and tasks and creates the focus required to work more productively than companies and teams reliant on synchronous work.
Asynchronous meetings lead to increased employee engagement
Ask any employee who spends most of their day in unproductive meetings how things are going at work. You’ll hear replies like: “crazy,” “uggh,” and “I can’t keep up.” Meeting overload, Zoom fatigue, and phone-call weariness are real things.
Companies and teams switching to asynchronous meetings are seeing employees and team members with higher engagement rates, better productivity, and greater happiness.
Asynchronous meetings result in more time for workers to focus on their priorities
A 2015 study titled 'Productivity of Office Workers' showed 36 percent of knowledge workers felt attending meetings diminished their productivity and the quality of their work. The benefits of asynchronous meetings all add up to allow you and your employees more time to focus on priorities — both at work and personally.
Without being forced to spend day after day in often unproductive synchronous meetings, workers can now focus on the most important work, achieve what they need to for the day, and get back to their own personal lives.
Working asynchronously, whether via asynchronous meetings, collaboration, or general communication, can create clearer focus, understood objectives and expectations, increased productivity, and happier workers.
Interested in learning more about asynchronous meetings? Read more here to see if your team is ready to make the shift.
.png)
