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No less than 51% of the Dutch are annoyed by colleagues who are sitting in front of the camera during a video call. This is shown by a survey conducted by VPNdiensten.nl among 1,506 Dutch workers. According to a significant part of the respondents, working remotely not only leads to loss of health, but also influences mutual trust. For example, a third of them think that their physical distance means that their colleagues take business rules less seriously.
Men up to the age of 35, in particular, suspect that their colleagues who work from home suspect they are ignoring the rules (47%). Among their female peers, this percentage is only 27%. Men and women are unanimous about unkempt colleagues: both half of the men (52%) and of the women (50%) consider a colleague who checks in unwashed during a video call to be unprofessional.
“We have been working completely from home for over two months now. In the beginning it didn’t bother me that much, but as this situation lasts longer, I notice that my motivation to dress completely office-proof is slowly disappearing ”, says Abel Baas, Cybersecurity consultant at VPNdiensten.nl. “Still, I try to commit myself to it every day. First of all to maintain my daily routine as much as possible and to set the right example for my colleagues. I would also be surprised if I found a colleague with unkempt hair in his or her pajamas. ”
Have lunch during video call
Despite the fact that we have been working from home en masse for a while now, digital collaboration is a major source of irritation for many respondents. In addition to showing up unkemptly, as many as 57 percent of respondents are bothered by colleagues who check in late during video calls and almost half (48%) are annoyed by colleagues who eat behind the camera. In as many as 38%, yawning colleagues get the blood from under their nails, while 29% of the respondents are blue annoyed by the cluttered workplaces of colleagues. Finally, a bad internet connection is a source of dissatisfaction for no less than 55%.
“When you work at home, you also start to behave yourself as if you were at home. But actually you should pretend to be in the office. There, too, you will not enter a meeting room too late and / or smacking and yawning ”, Baas believes. “I can understand why it sometimes creeps in when you sit alone all day. But out of respect for your colleagues, this is something you should pay attention to. ”
More distracted
The study also shows that video calls not only negatively affect the mood of the respondents, their productivity is also affected. As many as a quarter of the respondents say it is difficult to concentrate during a video call. Strikingly enough, especially young homeworkers (35%) are easily distracted. It is perhaps due to this distraction risk that 56% of respondents say that digital meetings are less fruitful than physical meetings. “I noticed that I got very quickly distracted by incoming emails and messages during video calls. At a certain point I had had enough and I turned off all pop-ups, sounds and notifications ”, Baas advises. “Since then, my video calls have become a lot more productive.”
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