No, I won't be there in person

Usually I like to write articles that help the remote worker be the best at their job while away from the office. But today, I'm writing for you in-office folks.

When a person is full-time work at home, they will NOT be attending your meeting in person.

Read that one again: They will NOT be attending in person. Period. 

It is up to work at home people to be fully engaged in their job, with their teams, and with their customers. This requires extra effort and attention, making even the easy meetings tougher. But we do it because we love what we do, and where we do it. We're willing to burn extra calories and put in more time to make it work.

But it's a two-way street!

We need the people in the office to put in a little more effort in on the meetings they schedule. If you are only meeting with a handful of people, you should be able to look at their work locations (or even time zones for that matter) and select a meeting medium that works for all parties. If it's a larger meeting or you didn't have time to check that, you need to assume that someone typically cannot be there in person and always offer an alternative.

It's also not enough to give offer a phone number and expect that everyone receives a fair ability to participate. It's up to the host of the meeting to ensure that all participants can properly hear, see, share, and participate. Some tips to help:

• Ask if listeners can hear, and make sure you can hear them.
• Ask if listeners can see your video, and make sure you can see them.
• Ask if listeners can see your shared screen, and vice versa.
• Talk slow enough to allow for people to inject comments. There may be phone delays, or people just waiting for a pause in conversation.
• Purposefully pause to check in with listeners.
• Announce where you are when presenting materials, so that if there is a delay people can speak up.
• Eliminate in-room options from the meeting. Commit to an all-virtual meeting to keep everyone on equal footing.

It's a common misconception that people working from home are really in-office people electing to be at home that day. Employees that are truly work at home are there full time. All the time. They are not "popping in" to the office today because of your meeting. Don't treat these workers like second class citizens because they are at home. And don't insult them with comments like "in case you could make it in." They won't.