Setting Up a Good Hybrid Meeting

Here is a quick test for any hybrid meeting: imagine you are the person joining from a laptop at home. Can you hear everyone clearly, including the quiet person at the far end of the table? Can you see who is speaking? Can you read the slide? Can you get a word in? If the answer to any of these is no, the meeting is really an in-room meeting that remote people are allowed to watch.

Getting hybrid right is less about expensive equipment and more about a few deliberate choices. This guide goes through them in order of importance, starting with the one people most often get wrong.

Audio comes first, always

Remote participants can tolerate a grainy picture. They cannot tolerate missing half of what is said. Poor audio is the single biggest reason hybrid meetings feel exhausting for the people online.

• Do not rely on a laptop microphone for a room with more than two or three people. It picks up the person closest to it and the air conditioning, and very little else.
• Use a conference speakerphone placed in the middle of the table, or a room system with ceiling or table microphones. For larger rooms, you may need more than one microphone.
• Only one device in the room should have audio on. If several laptops in the same room join the call with microphones and speakers active, you get echo and feedback. Everyone else in the room should join muted with their speakers off, or not join at all.
• Reduce room noise. Close the door, turn off noisy fans where possible and ask people not to type loudly next to the microphone.

Before the meeting, ask someone outside the room to join and listen while people at different seats speak. Adjust until the quietest seat is clear.

Cameras and framing

The goal is to let remote participants see faces and reactions, not the top of the table and a window.

Room camera

Place the camera at the front of the room, near the screen, at roughly eye level. That way, when people in the room look at the remote participants on the screen, they also appear to look towards the camera. A wide-angle conference camera helps in small rooms where everyone sits close together.

Light

Avoid seating people with a bright window behind them, which turns faces into silhouettes. Light should fall on faces from the front or the side. Close blinds if necessary.

Individual laptops as a second view

Some teams ask each person in the room to also join on their own laptop, camera on and audio fully off, so remote participants see every face up close. This can work well, but only if everyone strictly mutes their microphone and speakers. Try it in a low-stakes meeting first.

Remote people

Encourage people joining remotely to keep their camera at eye level, sit facing a light source and use a plain, uncluttered background. Headphones with a microphone make a noticeable difference for everyone else. Our guide to taking video calls from a shared space has more on that side of the setup.

Screens and shared content

Content should be equally visible to everyone. The simplest way to achieve that is to share slides, documents and whiteboards through the call itself, even for the people in the room, and display that on the room screen.

• Share digitally, not physically. A paper handout or a laptop turned towards the table excludes everyone online.
• Use a digital whiteboard instead of the wall whiteboard, or point a second camera at the physical board if you must use it.
• Make text large. Remote participants may be on small screens. If a slide is hard to read across the room, it is impossible on a laptop.
• Show the remote participants on the room screen in a size where people in the room actually notice them.

Running the meeting so everyone takes part

Even with perfect equipment, a hybrid meeting can slide into an in-room conversation. The person running it has to actively prevent that.

1. Name a facilitator whose job includes watching the remote participants and the chat.
2. Start with the remote people when going round the room for introductions or updates. It sets the tone.
3. Ask by name. Open questions like "any thoughts?" are almost always answered by someone in the room. Ask remote participants directly.
4. Avoid side conversations. Quiet asides in the room are invisible and inaudible online, and they make remote people feel left out.
5. Use one shared place for notes and decisions, visible to all, so nobody depends on the in-room memory of what was agreed.
6. Pause before closing a topic to give remote participants a moment to unmute. There is always a small delay.

Some teams go further and adopt a simple rule: if one person is remote, everyone behaves as if they were. It sounds strict, but it makes the meeting fairer and often shorter.

A checklist for the room

Whether you use your own office or book a room for the day, run through this before people arrive:

If you are booking a room rather than using your own, ask in advance what equipment is provided and whether you can test it. Our guides to booking a meeting room in Tirana and conference rooms in Tirana cover what to ask the venue. With a decent setup and a facilitator who remembers the screen, hybrid meetings can be just as productive as everyone sitting at one table.