Keywords

1 Introduction

Agile ways of working are changing because hybrid work is becoming the new norm [8]. Agile teams and team members have the flexibility to choose, at least to some degree, between remote and office-based work [3]. Smite et al. [17] surveyed 20 companies and found that preferences for the proportion of time spent in the office versus at home vary both across and within companies. Moe et al. [11] explored the co-presence patterns of 17 agile teams in a company whose employees work partly from home. They found significant variation in co-presence practices. Some teams exhibited a coordinated approach, ensuring team members were simultaneously present at the office. However, other teams demonstrated fragmented co-presence, with only small subgroups of members meeting in person and the remainder rarely interacting with their team members face-to-face. Agile teams spend a substantial amount of time in meetings, which are crucial venues for coordination, communication, and decision-making [21]. Developers report satisfaction when they invest their time in constructive meetings; however, long or unconstructive meetings are perceived as a waste of time and trigger negative emotions [5, 20]. Excessive time in meetings can limit developers’ sense of autonomy and reduce their productivity [6]. Scheduled meetings, while necessary for maintaining alignment across multiple teams, are often seen as disruptions to the developers’ workflow. Forced participation in meetings, especially those deemed irrelevant to immediate tasks, contributes to a sense of dissatisfaction [6, 20]. Additionally, unconstructive meetings result in time away from primary tasks, increasing employee stress and reducing job satisfaction [14]. Hybrid agile meetings are now common, offering both benefits and challenges. Positively, these meetings provide increased flexibility in scheduling and adding participants, save travel time, reduce environmental impact, and improve efficiency [12, 19]. Negatively, they can cause videoconference fatigue, with participants feeling physically and mentally drained after attending a meeting virtually [2]. Additionally, remote participation demands more structure, often resulting in remote participants remaining in a listening mode [22].

Hybrid meetings are becoming more common but remain challenging to conduct and can reduce job satisfaction, underscoring the need for more studies on how to manage them effectively. Our objective, therefore, is to answer the following research question: RQ: How can organizations manage hybrid meetings? To address our research question, we conducted a case study in a large-scale Norwegian Fintech company called BankDev (a pseudonym).

2 Context and Methodology

BankDev develops software for a group of Norwegian banks. The organization employs roughly 650 people in 24 teams, including both in-house employees and consultants, and caters to both the consumer and professional market [10]. We collected and analyzed anonymized access card data, and found the most popular office days to be Tuesdays and Wednesdays (see Fig. 1). We conducted interviews and observations in two teams: Team Fixed and Team Flex. Team Fixed had virtual days on Monday, where all team members should work from home by default. Tuesday and Wednesday were office days, while the team members could choose on Thursdays and Fridays where to work from. In contrast to Team Fixed, Team Flex offered complete flexibility, allowing individuals to choose their work location on any day without predetermined office or work-from-home days.

Fig. 1.
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Office presence of one typical week in BankDev in March 2022.

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Table 1. Overview of interviewees
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In total, 23 meetings were observed in the period October 2021 to March 2022. Three of them can be described as fully virtual, and 20 of them were hybrid. We observed 16 of the meetings physically co-located and 7 virtually using Microsoft Teams. We observed ten different types of meetings: sync meetings (5), retrospectives (4), Friday-wins (3), delivery meetings (2), show-and-tell meetings (2), team meetings/check-ins (2), presentations (2), stand-up in subteam (1), post mortem meeting (1), and team lead hybrid-workshop (1).

The company uses Slack, a well-known collaborating tool that allows chatting and video calls. Slack is the main tool for facilitating communication within the organization, especially within and between teams. On one occasion, Slack was described as a business-critical system because the platform facilitates a large amount of internal communication. To gain access, we had to be declared trustworthy by the department handling privacy and security concerns. This process took about two weeks.

The interviews were conducted between January 2022 and March 2022, and aimed to provide further insights into what was found during the observations. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Table 1 shows an overview of the interviewees’ roles, the level of experience each had in their role, and the total daily commute time to the office. Commute time is included because travel time to the office impacts the interviewees’ perspectives on hybrid work and its effects on their daily routines. Semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions were chosen in order to cover certain predefined topics, but also allow for exploration of topics as they emerged. In total, nine interviews were conducted split between the two research teams. The interviews lasted between 35 min to 86 min.

3 Results

The interviewees said that working hybrid allowed them more flexibility, which was reported to promote improved work-life balance and well-being. This finding was more likely to apply if the individuals had families with young children.

However, the fact that many in BankDev decided to work several days from home meant that many meetings were hybrid. Hybrid meetings consist of two distinct groups: those attending from a co-located space, typically together in a meeting room, and those participating remotely via digital conference tools. Whereas interviewees could effortlessly name several benefits of co-located and virtual meetings, all interviewees struggled to name benefits of hybrid meetings.

We found that hybrid meetings repeatedly seemed to include some degree of asymmetric participation. These asymmetries never seemed intentional; they occurred unconsciously due to the nature of hybrid meetings. We found that the ones attending virtually consistently contributed and engaged less. Next, we will report on the tech-driven and social-driven asymmetries we found and the factors contributing to these asymmetries.

3.1 Tech-Driven Asymmetries

Tech-driven asymmetries consist of situations where there is a technical issue or suboptimal solution, which causes a significant disadvantage for one group or person. The most obvious example of this was when those co-located in the meeting room had problems connecting to the virtual meeting. This created situations where the meeting could last several minutes before those attending virtually were finally connected. The co-located group would give a short summary of what had been discussed, which seemed to help the situation. Still, having to provide summaries caused disruptions to the meeting. The most prolonged delay we observed was eight minutes. Eight minutes was described as feeling like a long time for virtual participants sitting alone just waiting. Another challenge was related to the sound quality. Interviewee 7 said:

Conversations where there are many on the same microphone \(\ldots \) it doesn’t work that well. [...] For example, if there are discussions and many people are talking over each other, then it becomes impossible to separate what is said and by whom. [...] But when you are in the meeting room, your ears are kind of able to do it.

Similarly, it was typical for noises like coffee mugs being placed on tables, rustling with paper, or coughs and sneezes to override the microphone. Participants attending virtually could, therefore, miss a lot of the conversations, varying from a couple of seconds here and there to not being able to properly hear what was being said for minutes. In addition, several informants explained that since those in the meeting room did not experience the same issues, it was difficult for them to be aware of and mitigate the problem. Those attending virtually sometimes notified those co-located about the challenges. However, the threshold of doing so was perceived as relatively high.

3.2 Social-Driven Asymmetries

Reduced Engagement from Virtual Attendees. When observing hybrid meetings, it became apparent that the participants attending virtually generally engaged and contributed considerably less than those being co-located. We found that it happened consistently regardless of team, sub-team, or who was attending virtually that specific day. Our most extreme observation was a meeting where six were co-located, and two were attending virtually. The meeting lasted just over one hour, and 56 min passed before one of those attending virtually spoke up. The other was muted during the entire meeting. It was generally not uncommon for virtual participants to wait until everyone from the meeting room had said something before eventually engaging themselves. We recorded the time from the start of the meeting to when the first virtual participant spoke in four other meetings; on average, it took about eight minutes. Often, periods of silence almost even seemed like a prerequisite for the virtual participants to engage.

When sitting in the same meeting room, participants would often casually add small comments when others were speaking. These small comments served as transitions in the conversation, allowing new participants to take the word easily or comment on other comments. They also frequently used body language to engage in the conversation. This resulted in conversations that flowed organically. Active participation was more frequent, and the word was more often passed between the co-located participants. This lively interaction in the meeting room, however, created a higher barrier for virtual participants to join in, as the flow of conversation and frequent use of body language among co-located participants made it more challenging for those attending remotely to find opportunities to speak. A developer, Interviewee 9, illustrated this point:

I think if there is a critical mass in the office, and you are sitting at home, then it kind of feels like stepping onto a stage when you want to say something. Because they have such a good flow in the conversation, and suddenly you interrupt them from [Microsoft] Teams. You get scared that you might ruin that flow.

Interviewee 7 noted:

[When co-located] adding a quick comment doesn’t interrupt anyone. Virtually it can and that’s a really nasty feeling if you suddenly interrupt someone’s flow just because you wanted to add a little comment. There’s less natural flow. You have to wait for one person to finish and the next and the next. You really have to wait for your turn.

As a result, several informants reported only speaking up when they felt it was imperative and warranted what they saw as an interruption. The characteristics of hybrid meetings create a barrier between the co-located and the remote participants.

Virtual Attendees Missing Out on Side Conversations and Remarks. Co-located participants sometimes turned to the person sitting close to them and initiated small conversations. Not only were the virtual participants unable to hear these conversations, but people ended up facing away from the meeting room camera. This example also contributed to establishing an invisible barrier between the two groups. At times, the rest of the co-located participants overheard these conversations and further commented on them, especially if it was a question. As a result, the meeting could change topics without virtual participants hearing the initial trigger. If no one repeated the question to the virtual participants, we found that they engaged considerably less while discussing that particular topic. This asymmetry was especially apparent when funny remarks or jokes were whispered between co-located participants. The whole meeting room could start laughing, while the virtual participants often looked quite confused.

Virtual Attendees Missing Out on Talk Before and After the Meetings. Virtual participants were excluded from the talk before and especially after the meetings, e.g., when walking back to the desks. Although these conversations and feedback statements were not necessarily critical, they often served as a positive and uplifting end to the meetings. Also, there were occasions where these after-meeting talks were essentially a continuation of the meeting, with exclusively the co-located group present. Unofficial sessions like these could last several minutes. It never seemed like this was intentional, but rather spontaneously happened. On a few occasions, co-located participants sat down at their desks and further discussed the topics of the meeting. Whenever this happened, the discussions usually lasted between 5–15 min.

We also noticed that recently onboarded team members tended to stay in the meeting room after the meetings to ask clarifying questions. We informally asked an individual about this during observation, to which the person answered:

“When joining via Microsoft Teams, I usually have just as many questions, but I don’t really want to spam my colleagues with messages. But when we’re in the same room, I can ask these questions while finishing our coffee after the meeting.”

3.3 Factors Contributing to Asymmetries

The number of participants and the type of meeting were important factors influencing the degree of asymmetric participation. The types of meetings that included discussion or did not have a clear agenda or speaking order performed the worst in a hybrid meeting setting. Examples are different types of workshops and planning meetings. When observing, we found that a lack of a clear speaking order resulted in the co-located participants speaking up significantly more frequently than virtual participants. If all participants were free to take the word when they wished, the balance dramatically shifted towards those attending co-located.

One of the most apparent examples of this pattern was in a Friday Wins meeting where each team member could highlight what they had achieved that week. They would also praise others for their wins. The conversation was exclusively dominated by co-located participants for roughly ten minutes. When most of the co-located participants had said something, the first virtual participant spoke up. Of the five attending the meeting virtually, only two contributed. In contrast, everyone sitting in the meeting room said something.

4 Discussion and Conclusion

In this study, we analyzed office access card data for an agile company and investigated hybrid meetings by observing 23 meetings and conducting 9 interviews in two teams. Our analysis of the access card, interviews, and observations showed that many in the organization decided to work from home for several days, especially on Mondays and Fridays. A primary reason was not having to spend time commuting and that having a more flexible schedule contributed to a better work-life balance. These findings are similar to [4], and also other research that has found a better work-life balance to be one of the most common benefits of working from home [1, 18].

We identified significant discrepancies in the participation levels of co-located and virtual attendees in hybrid meetings. Our findings underscore that virtual participants are disadvantaged by both technological and social barriers, which diminish their ability to engage equally in the meeting dynamics. Our observations reveal that hybrid meetings often involve participation asymmetries, with virtual attendees consistently engaging less and contributing more sporadically than co-located participants. Furthermore, we found that being physically present in meetings was crucial for newly onboarded developers. Our findings align with those of [9], who studied the onboarding of globally distributed teams in a financial institution and found that physical co-location was important, while virtual participation in meetings proved troublesome.

Effective management of hybrid meetings is crucial for both team effectiveness and the emotional well-being of employees. Gerardi et al. [5] found that developers tend to feel more positive and satisfied when meetings are productive and constructive. On the other hand, as also reported in [20], lengthy and unconstructive meetings can evoke negative emotions and are considered a waste of time. Our findings are similar to [16], which found that the interaction in hybrid meetings was unequal and even unfair for virtual participants. Remote participants feel isolated from the meeting, while co-located participants dominate the interaction [16]. A recent study emphasizes that reducing barriers to participation is crucial for enhancing the design of hybrid meetings [7].

Saatçi et al. [16] argue that making meetings more inclusive for everyone is one of the primary challenges of hybrid meetings. Despite advanced technologies, practical issues still disrupt the inclusion of remote participants [15]. Virtual participants often find it confusing to remember who is in the meeting room if they are not visible to the camera [16]. Conversely, co-located participants face difficulties in including remote colleagues they cannot see, risking forgetting them entirely. The use of video during calls aids participants, particularly new team members, in understanding team dynamics and forming connections with peers [13]. To improve inclusivity in hybrid meetings, co-located participants might consider joining the call using their laptop cameras, which can make the meeting feel entirely virtual and treat everyone as equal participants. Additionally, having co-located participants manage turn-taking through meeting software features like “raise hand” can enhance inclusivity [15]. Sporsem et al. [19] also highlight that fully virtual meetings tend to achieve higher inclusion, as everyone has the opportunity to participate.

In light of these challenges, organizations must strive to create more inclusive hybrid environments. This can be achieved by investing in technological solutions that ensure seamless connectivity and clear audio-visual quality for all participants. Structuring meetings with clear agendas and predefined speaking orders can help ensure that all voices are heard equally, regardless of their physical location. The future of work is hybrid, and we must continue to evolve our understanding and methodologies to foster inclusivity and fairness in these settings. This study provides a foundation for further research and action toward optimizing hybrid meeting environments, ensuring that both virtual and co-located participants can collaborate equitably.