What is your “corporate webcam culture”?
By: Joe Siok
Tags: Zoom Fatigue, Corporate Culture, Web Meeting, Webcam, Accountability

Image by Jagrit Parajuli from Pixabay

If you Google that term, you get zero results, so congratulations to me, I just made something up.

I think this the part where I’m supposed to call the Trademark Office, register the domain, stake my claim, and wait for the royalties to come in? Or does just publishing this give me de-facto rights to the term now?

I’m kidding of course, unless someone else registers the domain and makes millions somehow.

Joking aside, I have been thinking about this for a while now as for many years I have been doing a lot of remote work, used just about every web meeting tool out there I think, and have noticed that just about every company, division, team, group, manager, etc. handles the web meeting thing differently.

I have yet to find a trend on this one, regardless of company size, geography, or any flavor of demographic you can think of regarding the people on the call.

Honestly, I find it all quite fascinating.

Since I apparently created this term, then darn it I get to define it too. Here you go:

corporate webcam culture (noun)

1. The approach that an organization, or group within an organization, takes regarding the use of webcams during any type of web meeting. Example 1: The corporate webcam culture at my company is very paranoid as they do not allow any webcams to be used for our web meetings. Example 2: I feel that our corporate webcam culture is a bit intrusive as everyone’s webcam is on for web meetings and you are guilted if yours is not. origin — Joe Siok made it up so send him any and all royalties

With that as my definition, I ask the question:

What is your “corporate webcam culture”?

In the “everything is remote” world that we are currently living in, this is now an interview question that I strongly recommend to anyone I am coaching as I think it is important to understand. Since the term clearly isn’t widely used and I suspect is pretty easy to figure out, it generates some interesting discussion and I would argue some insight into the company culture as well as that of the manager you are potentially working for.

To be clear, this isn’t a Right vs Wrong thing at all — it’s just different and everyone has a different comfort level with being on camera — even if it’s just a meeting of your small group.

I believe the statistic is that people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of dying, so add being “on camera” to that and you can imagine the mindset that some can have.

I could write a whole piece of the Pros and Cons of webcams, and I’m guessing I’d get some pretty interesting feedback. And of course, we have all heard of the “webcam fails” that have happened — those are as entertaining as they are frightening.

One of the “Pros” of having the webcam on, at least in my experience, is that you are much less likely to get distracted. And not just with personal stuff, but with email, instant messaging, that email you forgot to respond to, etc. If your camera is off and your mic is muted, you can do just about anything. Having the camera and mic on is really the best way to simulate an in-person meeting, which is kind of the point of all of this anyway. It’s like the level above a plain-old conference call.

That’s the personal accountability side of things anyway. The flipside of that is where the “corporate webcam culture” comes into play. If your camera is off and your mic is muted, what does your manager think? Or your team for that matter. Is the assumption that you are napping, watching the ball game, or otherwise not paying attention? Or is there a level of trust there that camera/mic aren’t critical as long as you are attending?

Right there is a lot to unpack related to trust, accountability (both ways), professional focus, the culture of distraction, etc.

I’m not going to write a book on all of that (at least not in this piece), but I wanted to introduce a few topics/questions to consider when it comes to this “webcam world” we live in. Ponder these when you have some time:

· How would you define your “corporate webcam culture”?

· How would your manager define it?

· What do you think about the accountability side of having that camera on during all meetings?

· How do you feel about team members on your call that always have their cameras off? What if they are on for the start of the meeting, and then turn them off?

· How many times have you wanted to mute that annoying person with the background noise (coffee shop, family stuff, barking dog, etc)? LOL

· If you are the manager, what are your expectations around having cameras on during team meetings and is your team aware of those expectations?

And as always, I welcome and encourage your comments and questions!