How to solve the top 3 hybrid meeting challenges

By improving meetings, you will see positive changes in areas such as productivity, workplace happiness and collaboration. There are many challenges to overcome to reach these effects. A great way to start is to identify the top 3 challenges and then find ways to tackle them. At Svava we strive to help our users become better meeting hosts, by helping them raise meeting quality. By using Svava for your meetings in Microsoft Teams you already have a head start.


We have listened to our users and collected their top 3 challenges with hybrid meetings, and how they solve them using Svava.

Challenge 1: Disengagement 

Disengagement is a true productivity killer. It is also contagious, so it is important to do something about this as soon as possible. 

Disengagement is seen most among those in a hybrid team who work remote, especially during badly run hybrid meetings. If a person cannot fully see, hear or interact during a meeting, she is bound to become disengaged. It is often also connected to a sense of lack of ownership in the meeting or project. 

To solve this problem; make sure all your team members and meeting participants feel and experience the following:

  • Sense of ownership

  • Inclusion

  • Feeling valued

  • Being seen

  • Being heard

Some of these points are fixed with technology, some with leadership skills and active involvement. 

A hybrid meeting is not just a physical meeting with some people joining online, it needs to be a session that focuses on inclusion and engagement for everyone. If not, you risk losing the input of those joining remotely as they become more of an audience than real participants.

Make sure everyone in the meeting i heard and involved

Before the meeting - prepare

Start by putting yourself in the shoes of the people joining remotely, how should they experience the session? Think also about the design of your meeting. Will you have speakers they need to see and hear? Are you presenting slides or making decisions? This will impact how you should do the setup.

When you know the type of meeting and what experience you are striving for, create a Svava meeting. In the Svava meeting, you can design an agenda with different types of activities. Include activities for note-taking, sharing presentations and engagement (like polls and word clouds). Share the Svava meeting invitation and agenda well in advance, so people can prepare.

During the meeting - engage

At the meeting, make sure everyone is joining the Svava meeting, from a laptop or perhaps a smartphone. This way, everyone can contribute and see all input. As the host, you must also make sure the possibility to speak is given to everyone, putting extra emphasis on those joining remotely. Be super careful at the summary of the meeting, making sure everyone agrees on the outcome. We recommend closing the meeting with a poll, asking if participants understand the decisions that were made or what they take away from the session.

Svava opens up as an app in your Microsoft Teams video call, improving engagement

After the meeting - learn

As the hybrid reality is new to most of us, make sure you listen to your participants and learn how to become even better as a host and leader!

Challenge 2: Lack of notes/unclear output 

Have you ever taken part in a meeting where you shared ideas, discussed issues and made decisions, only to never see any notes? You are not alone. By using a tool, like Svava, you save time by having the tool compile the result for you, instantly available when the meeting ends.

We also recommend shared responsibility for the note-taking among participants, opposed to assigning one person as secretary. You can read more on this here.

A study (in Swedish) showed that 40 % of meeting participants were unsure as to what had been decided during the meeting when leaving. Often meeting leaders felt they had summarised the meeting, but the participants did not feel this way. If your participants leave a meeting confused, the meeting did not live up to the standards of high quality. Cure this by clearly displaying all decisions taken in text, for everyone to see. Also, make sure the decisions are assigned to a person, and that there is a deadline for it. This is not only important for productivity, it is also a mental health issue. Being unsure as to what is expected of me, is a stress factor that can lead to stress-related problems.

Image showing how to collaborate on notes in Svava

In Svava all notes are visible to everyone, providing transparency and clear division of tasks.

Challenge 3: Lacking structure 

Almost all of our meetings do well by having a clear structure, even those “spur of the moment”-meetings where you simply jump on a Teams-call with a couple of colleagues. If all meetings, no matter how big or small, have an agenda, engaging activities, and well-written notes you would see an increase in both perceived meeting quality and higher quality output.

By gaining more structure to your meetings you will see an increase in productivity and engagement. Participants know what to expect from the meeting, and what is expected of them. A clear structure also saves loads of time as it makes the meeting easier to document and follow up. 

Many Svava users agree that the tool has given them more structure. For some, this was not something they thought they needed, but once incorporated, they saw how much it helped them. By adding Svava as an app to your Microsoft Teams video meetings, hybrid or fully remote, you can also increase engagement, clarity and structure. Learn how to add Svava to Microsoft Teams here.

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