A conference call too many?

I read an article recently which said that the average sales person now spends at least 3 hours per week on conference calls. This made me interested in how I spend my time, and why on Friday I was sat in my office at 7pm, with 263 unread emails. On a quick review of my meetings and conference calls for the last month I have spent an average of 8 hours per week on conference calls (this does not include face to face meetings). As I only work a 4 day week (30 hours paid employment hours) this represents over 25% of my working week. A whole day is spent dialling into and participating on conference calls. Week commencing 3rd May 2010 was my ‘worse’ week with over 11 hours of conference calls. More than a day and a half spent participating in conference calls.

Now with the benefit of Outlook archive I could view my diary for the same period last year. How interesting, I spent on average only 3 hours per week on conference calls. So what has happened? I do have a slightly different role within my organisation, but I think it is more than this. As 80% of the UK team now have a ‘smarter working’ role (we do not have to be in the office to do our job) the reliance on conference calls for team meetings, briefings and discussions has increased.

About 5 months ago, I was on, possibly the worse conference call ever. Our MD had also dialled in. One and a half hours with so many interruptions I can only start to list them; constant beeps signifying people joining and leaving, someone putting us on hold on his mobile (so all participants were subjected to ‘hold music’), a dog barking, ambulance siren blaring, and a speaker forgetting to reference where he was on the slide deck. So if you were not 100% concentrating you found it hard to keep up. I left the call thinking, what a waste of time and feeling very annoyed.

After this call, the entire EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) team were sent a new conference call etiquette guide. As you can imagine our instructions were simply common sense, but this sense was not been used. And I have to be honest things have improved exponentially. Everyone remembers to go on mute when they are not actively participating and this for a start is a huge advantage.

One of the potential disadvantages of a fully flexible workforce is the requirement of telephonic forms of communication. As we are not often all in the same premises at the same time – we have to rely on the importance of voice and the quality of our calls. Somewhat obvious, when face to face you have the massive benefit of body language and you can watch for feedback (do people look bored?). When participating on a conference call your tone, pitch, speed and use of voice are more important than your message. Flat and boring everyone switches off and uses the time to check emails and hopes they don’t get asked a question.

Now this isn’t a discussion on the benefits and disadvantages of conference calls – it is simple fact that in a flexible working life they are a necessity. Remember a little etiquette. Would you join late, leave early, take calls, or make noisy distractions in a face to face meeting? Plus don't forget to use your voice, this is just as important as your message!