While video conferencing platforms, like Zoom and Teams, were god sends during the Covid pandemic, their usage was not without consequences. Indeed, a recent study from Nanyang Technological University highlights how they often resulted in higher levels of fatigue among workers.

The researchers found that nearly half of respondents to a survey conducted in December 2020 reported feeling overwhelmed, fatigued, tired, or drained from the use of videoconferencing apps.

“We were motivated to conduct our study after hearing of increasing reports of fatigue from the use of videoconferencing applications during the pandemic,” the researchers explain. “We found that there was a clear relationship between the increased use of videoconferencing and fatigue in Singaporean workers.”

Burned out

On average, the respondents spent around three days per week working from home, with a typical work day of around nine hours. The researchers believe that their findings are important to understand if hybrid working is to be a more common feature of working life.

“As more organizations move toward embracing a hybrid work model where video conferencing plays a significant role in how people meet and work, employers should be mindful of both the benefits and drawbacks of such technology in the workplace,” they continue. “While video conferencing tools are easy to navigate and useful in scheduling meetings, the downside is that people may end up packing their day with back-to-back meetings, leading to exhaustion at the end of the workday.”

As a result, they argue that we should really be viewing video conferencing tools as useful but with some significant drawbacks. The fatigue is often caused by the increase in the amount of eye contact we have with colleagues during a virtual meeting, which can be much higher than in a normal meeting. The fact that we’re also on screen ourselves can be tiring as we’re generally not used to seeing ourselves so consistently and can induce “mirror anxiety”.

“We hope that our results will spur further research to understand the extent to which the environment for human communication can function as a social determinant of health,” the authors conclude. “We hope that it will encourage different stakeholders, such as policy makers, technology developers, community leaders, corporate leaders, and users, to come together to practically address the problems of videoconferencing fatigue.”