Although you may be at home, or at least, not in the office, it is no excuse not to be professional in meetings online. Because of COVID, I have been working from home now for almost a year, with 5 or 6 daily online meetings, and I have seen it all. At the start, people didn´t know how to behave - I mean, this is something new for us, and we had never been forced to work from home like this before, so it is understandable that no-one knew what was happening, how they should act while working from home, and what the etiquette was. But as days turned into weeks, then into months, and now it has been almost a year, we are more aware of how we should appear when we are working from home. 





Here are some tips to make sure that you stay professional while working online:

  1. DO NOT WEAR YOUR PYJAMAS! And PLEASE don´t wear your dressing gown. I cannot stress this enough - it is completely unprofessional, even if you are talking to a colleague that you have known for ages. If you want, only dress in day clothes from the waist up, and wear a pair of comfortable trousers or tracksuit bottoms on your bottom half,  (as long as you will not be standing up and walking around!), but please, don´t wear your pyjamas! 


2. On the same topic of appearance, you should look presentable - by this I mean basic hygiene, comb your hair, brush your teeth, wash your face - have a shower! You may not need to dress as formally as you would in the office (this is company - dependent, and it also depends if you are having a meeting with a client, your manager, or a colleague), but you should at least look tidy and clean. This is for 2 reasons - the first reason is that YOU will feel much better, and the second reason is that you gain more respect if you look more professional. 


3. Your background should not show your laundry - no matter how cool your colleagues are, they do not want to see your underwear hanging behind you. Working at home with my husband in an apartment that only has one office, I know the challenges of trying to have a professional background, but you should try to find a corner that is relatively tidy behind you. I have had meetings in my kitchen with my back against the blank wall, in my sitting room with my back against another blank wall, and in my bedroom with a Japanese screen behind me that I bought specifically for the occasion (you know the ones that fold in 3 to be stored). Your background doesn´t have to be perfect, but it should not have a lot of things. 


4. Try to minimise background noise - close your door so your colleagues or clients cannot hear the people who live with you. Close your window if you have a noisy street. 


5. Check your sound is OK - you may need to buy headphones to improve the sound. Ask your colleagues if the sound is OK.


6. Try to have a strong reliable internet connection - we moved to an excellent internet company last year (shout out to Pepephone) and have gone from having constant interruptions and very little gigabytes on our phones, to an excellent fibre connection with a lot of gigas on our phone, in case. 


7. Try to arrive to the meeting early to ensure you can join the meeting OK and to check  that everything is working well and you don't need to fix any issues.


8. If it is a big meeting, mute your microphone, although the person leading the meeting may already do this.

9. Don´t try to do other tasks when you are supposed to be attending the meeting - the others can hear you typing on your keyboard and notice that you are not concentrating. 


10. Ideally, you should position your device so that you are eye level with the camera - if the camera is too low you do not look your best - no-one wants to see up your nose and your chin may not look the best! 


11. It is also not good to be very close to the camera - you do not want people to see all the imperfections of your face, and although you are not physically close, it can cause people to feel uncomfortable. 


12. Take into account that we do not have all the non-verbal queues - the body language - that we normally have, even though we can see the person. Therefore you need to be more patient with people, there will be more pauses, people will speak at the same time by accident - the meeting may not flow as well as it would if you were physically together. This is normal.


13. If you are having connection issues, you may improve your sound if you turn off your camera.

14. Have patience! Not everyone may be as experienced as you at having meetings online. I remember having an online meeting with my son´s teacher and about 20 other parents, during the beginning of the COVID pandemic, and it was HORRIFIC - no-one was on mute, the teacher´s sound and connection were terrible so we couldn´t hear her well, there was interference from other devices, dogs barking, family conversations… the worse meeting I ever attended! So, OK, that is an extreme example, but you get the picture.


15. Finally - be sure to turn off your camera and sound if you leave the meeting - as well as the risk of being caught saying something you shouldn´t, we have all seen the youtube videos of people doing strange things when they thought they were no longer live! 


It should be noted that, for those of us who have experience working online, we have all experienced fails and had embarrassing moments - mine are usually related to my utter fails in basic attempts to screen share, split-screen, things like that, more so at the beginning. If that happens, laugh about it and keep going! 


You will find expressions to use in English during online meetings in our online course here https://improve-your-english.thinkific.com/courses/essential-expressions-for-meetings