Are AI Meeting Assistants the Cure to Meeting Fatigue?

The way we work changed in many ways over the pandemic — from less hand-shaking, to remote-first arrangements, to virtual social hours. It also introduced us to a new concept: meeting fatigue.

Meeting fatigue, also known as Zoom fatigue, meeting overload, or meeting bloat, is a phrase coined to describe the exhaustion we can feel after a day of virtual meetings. 

It manifests as:

• Feelings of physical and mental tiredness
• An inability to stay focused during meetings
• A sense of dread when it’s time for a meeting

If you’ve felt these symptoms, you’re far from alone. According to research from Webex, 95% of workers experience video meeting fatigue. 

Microsoft even did a study looking at what happens in our brains during back-to-back meetings. They found that when there were no breaks between meetings, “people showed higher levels of beta waves, which are associated with stress, anxiety and concentration.”

And it’s not just a concern for individual workers. For HR and leadership, it’s important to keep a close eye on meeting fatigue because that exhaustion can lead to employee churn.

There’s no single solution to meeting fatigue, but with the right meeting policies and tooling, you can significantly reduce the impact. One of the tools that can alleviate meeting fatigue is an AI note taker.

By increasing efficiency, keeping meetings organized, and taking care of tedious tasks, an AI meeting assistant relieves some of the root causes of meeting fatigue. And that means feeling less stressed and less drained at the end of the day.

Here, we’ll go over five of the top causes of meeting fatigue and examine how an AI meeting assistant can help.

Cause 1: High mental load

According to an article from Professor Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford University, a major contributor to meeting fatigue is that “the cognitive load is much higher in video chats.”

In short, humans are hardwired to have an easier time interacting with each other in person. On a video call, it takes more of our brain power to do things like interpret body language, exaggerate our own body language, and stay in the centre of the frame.

In addition to all that, we still have to contend with taking meeting notes manually, adding to the mental load. This is where an AI meeting assistant can help.

A tool like Fellow uses AI to automatically take meeting notes, in addition to recording the meeting and producing a transcript. That means instead of trying to both participate and take notes, you can relax at least a little and focus on the conversation at hand. Having AI handle the notes also takes away from any stress over missing something important.

As long as video meetings are the new normal for remote work, it will take time for our brains to readjust. In the meantime, we can help give them a break by taking away the tedium of manual note taking.

Cause 2: Frequent context-switching

You’re likely very familiar with context-switching, even if the term is new for you. It’s used to describe the act of constantly switching between tasks, apps, and meetings. 

It’s become the norm at most workplaces, but our brains aren’t great at it. According to Harvard Business Review, “excessive toggling increases the brain’s production of cortisol (the primary stress hormone), slows us down, and makes it harder to focus.”

Context-switching occurs in two ways during meetings: first in switching between the meeting and other applications, and second when we have to quickly jump from one meeting to another. An AI meeting assistant can help with both.

With Fellow, you won’t have to find yourself constantly switching between your video conferencing platform and your meeting agenda. Fellow integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams to display your agenda in the same window as your meeting.

You also won’t have to switch over to a document to take notes, because Fellow’s AI does it for you. And, if you do want to take some manual notes, you can add them right in the meeting agenda that shows up beside the video during your meeting. Less switching around applications reduces that stress we mentioned.

Context-switching also occurs when you have back-to-back meetings and have to jump from one discussion to another. The cognitive effects of that switching are heightened when you’re not prepared for your next call and have to get caught up. With Fellow, every meeting comes with a collaborative agenda so you can preview and plan meetings in advance. As well, 15 minutes before a recurring meeting, Fellow sends a pre-meeting brief detailing what was talked about last time.

Fellow’s pre-meeting briefs provide a concise, automated summary of your previous meetings, including key discussion points and action items that need follow-up. Designed to support back-to-back schedules, this feature gives you all the details you need to walk into your next meeting prepared.

In both cases, an AI meeting assistant reduces how taxing context-switching can be, making it easier to focus and move forward productively.

Cause 3: Unplanned and unproductive meetings

Meeting fatigue is only made worse when you realize the meeting you’re in isn’t going anywhere, has no clear purpose, and won’t produce any results.

This cause really speaks to the sense of dread meeting fatigue sufferers feel before a meeting — no one is going to be happy to attend a meeting without purpose. We’ve all attended meetings where the meeting ends up being about why you’re having a meeting at all.

The biggest cause of unproductive meetings is a lack of documentation, and that’s where an AI meeting assistant shines.

With Fellow, every meeting has an agenda — period. We even have a saying around here: “no agenda, no attenda.” If a scheduled meeting doesn’t have a clear agenda, that’s a huge red flag that the meeting shouldn’t happen at all. There’s even a setting in Fellow that suggests a meeting be deleted if it doesn’t have an agenda.

Every meeting with Fellow will have meeting notes as well as an AI recording, transcript, and summary. That documentation means there’s a clear record of what was discussed so nothing gets lost. As well, Fellow’s AI is able to detect and assign action items, so there’s a clear follow-up strategy after a meeting ends.

Over time, Fellow helps organizations recognize when meetings are unproductive, allowing them to be cancelled before they waste any more time.

Our philosophy is that recording a bad meeting still means you had a bad meeting, which is why Fellow does more than just transcribe.

“You can transcribe and summarize a crappy meeting and it would still be a waste of time,” says Aydin Mirazee, Fellow’s CEO.

“Fellow goes beyond that. It makes sure your meetings are effective and it uses AI every step of the way from helping you prepare, to helping you take notes to all the follow-up that happens after the fact.”

Cause 4: Saying yes to too many meetings

Often the cause of meeting fatigue is simply too many meetings. In a remote or hybrid work environment, conversations that could have been a simple chat in an office turn into 20, 30, and sometimes 60-minute-long virtual meetings. 

In fact, according to Microsoft, time spent in meetings has more than tripled since the onset of the pandemic. Worse, a study found that up to one-third of meetings aren’t even necessary. Additionally, our own State of Meetings report found that US workers are spending at least 20% of their work week in meetings.

With an AI meeting assistant, you can actually start to reduce the number of meetings you attend. As mentioned above, a tool like Fellow helps make sure all meetings are documented and productive so it’s easy to identify which ones can be cancelled.

The other way Fellow can help is with asynchronous attendance. As long as one meeting participant invites Fellow to record a meeting, a recording, transcript, and summary are created that can be shared and reviewed by people who didn’t attend themselves. 

That means you can decide to skip a meeting and instead catch up later on your own terms, maintaining control of how your time at work is used. It’s also a huge benefit when returning from vacation or other time away.

According to Sean Santschi, a product leader at Motive:

“With Fellow, I don’t even have to join meetings. I can ask Fellow AI to take notes and I can catch up on what was talked about if I’m not able to join the call.” 

Relieve the fatigue and reclaim your time

Video meetings may be a reality of modern work, but they don’t need to be so exhausting. Meetings should be a time to collaborate, solve problems, and push meetings forward — not something that you dread.

An AI meeting assistant is a fantastic tool to start fighting back against meeting fatigue and relieve stress. By automating stress-inducing tasks, ensuring productive meetings, and reducing context-switching, an AI meeting assistant is a must-have addition to your tech stack.

In addition to adopting an AI meeting assistant to combat meeting fatigue, organizations can also:

• Institute no meeting days
• Allow cameras off at least some of the time
• Set time limits for meetings
• Limit attendees to those who really need to be there
• Build breaks into long meetings

Want to start relieving meeting fatigue at your company? Try Fellow, the #1 AI meeting assistant.