Why You Should Be Recording Your Work Meetings

“Can this be recorded?”: The progression from concern to necessity with meeting recordings.

In today’s climate, more and more meetings occur in the virtual environment than ever before. With the growing demand for employees to stay in touch, businesses are investing heavily in conferencing solutions. With that, many organizations and their staff have seen a drastic increase in the number of meetings on their calendars. 

According to a study by Reclaim.ai ^[1], remote and hybrid employee calendars have gotten a lot fuller in recent years, with:

• An average of 26 meetings per week.
• A 70% increase in meetings per week since the work from home movement.
• An average of 22 hours in meetings per week.

Productive meetings are not the issue, of course, but unfortunately few meetings seem to be described as such by remote workers.

Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Meetings?

Most meetings take place over your computer, phone or dedicated meeting room device, making recording meetings much easier. But recording a conversation, especially in the workplace, is often an afterthought, but should it be?

Many of you may have asked yourselves, “Can I record this?”. The answer is yes, and now is the best time to start recording your meetings.

The Two Psychological Effects Plaguing Your Meetings

Meetings are a crucial part of remote and hybrid work, but they can sometimes be incredibly inefficient. A lot of this inefficiency can be attributed to the psychological effects that occur before and during a meeting.

As a meeting owner, it’s your responsibility to ensure that your attendees feel comfortable sharing their ideas and concerns. Recording calls and meetings are helpful, but it’s important to be aware of the potential effects that recording can have on your attendees. To alleviate concerns, you should make sure that only attendees have access to the meeting recording, and they have the option to stop the recording at any time.

One psychological effect impacting meetings is the fear of missing out (FOMO). Even the busiest employees tend to accept every meeting invitation because they’re worried to miss out on important conversations. It’s the meeting owners’ responsibility to ensure only mandatory participants are invited to meetings.

Another is the Mere Urgency Effect. People tend to prioritize urgent but less important tasks that can be completed quickly, rather than focusing on important tasks requiring more effort. One way to mitigate this effect is by using a meeting recording tool to provide a clear and concise summary of the meeting for those who can’t attend.

How Meeting Recordings Can Be Helpful

On the flip side, recording a meeting leads to incredible productivity in many situations. The science of listening to your own voice can help to improve presentation skills and refine sales pitches. Yet, the benefits of a meeting recording depend on the specific use case and the people you involve.

Here are a few examples to consider:

• Executives with busy schedules can benefit from meeting recordings to catch up on ones they couldn’t attend and quickly review meeting highlights.
• Sales managers and team leaders can turn meeting recordings into teachable moments for their team. A recording can help them review how their team interacts with customers and identify areas for improvement.
• Customer success managers and support managers can use recordings to share important information, such as escalation calls, with their team leaders. This can help them better understand the call and learn how to respond appropriately.
• Vendors and partners can benefit from a recording to help track important call details that would otherwise be hard to remember.

Gartner Reports That 75% of Conversations Will Be Recorded by 2025 ^[2]

This eye-opening statistic begs the question, why are meeting recordings becoming standard practice? One reason is data and privacy. It’s becoming increasingly important for organizations to have a record of what is being discussed in meetings, which helps to protect organizations from legal disputes and data breaches.

The pandemic may have accelerated the trend, but it didn't start it. It's a clear indication that meeting recordings are becoming more popular. With the shift to cloud-based solutions, it’s becoming easier for organizations to record and store their meetings with simple access to recordings for meeting participants, which helps organizations build a culture of transparency.

Overall, meeting recordings have become a necessary tool for organizations, helping us archive and access important information quickly.

Are All Meeting Recordings Alike?

Native Recording Options

Almost every unified communications (UC) solution available today has an embedded recording solution, which allows individuals to record their online meetings. There are several important questions to consider about meeting recordings:

• Can everyone access meeting recordings, or do they need permission?
• Can I easily share meetings internally?
• Can I quickly find important meeting moments?
• Do I need to be concerned with security protocols for my meeting recordings?
• How closely is it integrated with Microsoft Teams or your UC provider?

If you’re happy with your answers to the above questions, you mostly likely have a good solution. But if you don’t have a meeting recording add-on that you’re happy with, you probably need to explore a third-party application to be tightly integrated with your UC solution.

Three Considerations with a Meeting Recording Software

1. Look for a recording solution that’s automated and easy to use, so you don’t spend time and energy making sure the recoding takes place.
2. Make sure the recording solution has advanced search capabilities to find specific information quickly and easily within the recording.
3. Find a solution that enables easy sharing and collaboration within and outside the organization.

Meeting recordings are becoming a necessity as they allow for better productivity, improved communication and better understanding of your needs. The key to a successful recording is to make sure the recording process is automatic, allows you to easily search for keywords, highlights and notes within the meeting and provides seamless sharing and collaboration with internal and external teams.

To learn more about meeting recordings and how to implement them in your organization, check out AudioCodes Meeting Insights.

Want to hear more about the shift to recording meetings? Watch the January session of Beyond the Meeting Presented by Meeting Insights on YouTube!

[1] https://reclaim.ai/blog/productivity-report-one-on-one-meetings
[2] https://www.telemessage.com/gartner-by-2025-75-of-conversations-at-work-will-be-recorded-and-analyzed-enabling-the-discovery-of-added-organizational-value-or-risk