Remote work video meetings: Workers’ emotional exhaustion and practices for greater well-being

Abstract

Meeting science literature provides a foundation for understanding workplace meetings as a source of stress. However, a new form of worker stress, “Zoom fatigue,” quickly emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic when organizations rapidly adopted video meetings for remote work-from-home. We sought to understand workers’ perceptions about video meeting experiences and how they relate to their sense of emotional exhaustion. Additionally, we were curious about what workers might see as ways to make video meetings less tiring and more beneficial. These insights could inform practical solutions for leaders and organizations to reduce the stress and resulting emotional fatigue related to video meetings. This mixed-methods study, based on survey data collected in August 2020 from 345 workers at a cross-section of U.S.-headquartered organizations, provides evidence of worker experiences related to video meeting stress. The quantitative and qualitative results show that workers feel psychologically depleted by video meeting load, an excess of load needed to do their job, video meetings that are not beneficial to them, video meetings that conflict with the time and energy needed to perform their other job responsibilities and fulfill their home responsibilities, and the perceived necessity to surface act. The data show these factors relate to diminished well-being in the form of emotional exhaustion. Participants’ qualitative responses corroborate the results and suggest supportive practices related to planning and inclusion and supportive interaction that can ease video meeting exhaustion.

Keywords

Autonomy emotional exhaustion employee experience leadership meeting norms and practices social support stress surface acting video meetings well-being

Exhaustion related to meetings is not a new phenomenon: the many reasons people feel depleted by in-person meetings are well-established in the literature (e.g. Erks et al., 2017; Lehmann-Willenbrock et al., 2016; Shanock et al., 2013). That emotional depletion is not surprising because meetings are more than just a tool to accomplish work. Indeed, meetings are a social forum where people recognize and inevitably react to other people’s expressions of emotions while striving to achieve an understanding, an agreement, or a resolution (Schwartzman, 1986).

A meeting is a synchronous (same-time) coming together of “people who agree to assemble for a purpose ostensibly related to the functioning of an organization or group” (Schwartzman, 1989: 61). Every meeting is an event that mirrors and impacts the broader workplace system, and its success depends on three factors. First among those factors is how people perceive the qualities of their interactions with others. Second is the extent to which those qualities promote their success at accomplishing what they intend. The third is the degree to which those intentions promote positive relational interactions (Schwartzman, 1989).

Scholars who have studied meeting interactions, meeting satisfaction, and meeting processes that can promote success have mainly examined in-person meetings. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic saw the launch of contagion-mitigation measures that included office-workers’ near universal shift to remote work and a prevalent reliance on video meetings to accomplish group work. Seemingly overnight, video meetings quickly became ubiquitous, and from them emerged an associated phenomenon referred to in the mainstream media as “Zoom fatigue.” Even as pandemic-related concerns gradually resolve, some efficiencies realized from remote work mean that video meetings may continue as a prevalent group work venue. Accordingly, video meetings present new complexities and challenges to interpersonal interactions, such as the emotional fatigue and drain associated with them.

Given the newness of the wide adoption of video meetings as a workplace tool among formerly co-located workers, there is scant empirical evidence to address why video meetings may exhaust workers’ emotional resources. Nor is there adequate scholarly knowledge to inform new organizational practices to avoid the associated depletion of emotional energy so widely reported in mainstream media. What makes video meetings during remote work emotionally draining? What do workers say would make them less so? What do workers say leaders can do to alleviate the resources-depleting stress of video meetings? The rationale for this exploratory study is to begin addressing those three questions.

We used mixed methods to explore the primary research question: What video meeting experiences relate to emotional exhaustion, and what practices do remote workers say would help? We examined the extent to which remote workers who recently attended or led video meetings reported emotional exhaustion: being emotionally overextended and exhausted by their work (Maslach and Jackson, 1981). We probed for remote workers’ perceptions and experiences associated with their video meetings and how those relate to stressors that, in turn, relate to emotional exhaustion. Key variables included video meeting load and sufficiency, surface acting, and conflicts between the time and energy needed for video meetings and participants’ other job responsibilities and household responsibilities. We also explored through open inquiry what makes video meetings tiring, if they are so.

We employed the Conservation of Resources Model of Stress (Hobfoll, 1989, 1998, 2001) to explore relationships among the variables and emotional exhaustion. In this way, we examined workers’ sense of loss, or threat of loss, of their resources, such as their energies, personal characteristics, conditions, and material objects. We also explored through open inquiry what others do or might do to make them less exhausting or more beneficial to the participant, thereby enabling participants to identify any forms of social support (congruent with Hobfoll, 2001) relevant for them.

This study’s focus on emotional exhaustion is distinct from other studies that examine the physical toll of video meetings on participants (e.g. Fauville et al., 2021). We wondered whether the “Zoom fatigue” with video meetings, as reflected in anecdotal mainstream media coverage, was due to the modality of video meetings or, as highlighted by meeting science (Schwartzman, 1986, 1989), perhaps related to the quality and characteristics of the meeting interactions, or a combination of both these factors. As part of the massive upheaval in how people lived and worked in the same place during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also wondered whether the pervasive adoption of video meetings for remote work represented a threat to or depletion of worker resources. Did people find their resources for meeting their work demands challenged in this sweeping and sudden shift to remote video meeting work? If so, how?

Eliciting both quantitative and qualitative data, we explored what workers said they experienced about video meetings for remote work and aspects of video meetings that might challenge workers’ resources, potentially relating to their emotional exhaustion. We also sought workers’ insights on video meeting practices that provide relief or add benefit. This study contributes to meeting science, management science, and social science literatures. It suggests organizational, leader, and employee practices that, congruent with Conservation of Resources theory (Hobfoll and Ford, 2007), may enable workers to conserve their valued resources and achieve their common goals.

Theoretical background

In this study, our overarching research question was: What video meeting experiences relate to emotional exhaustion, and what practices do remote workers say would help? To answer this question, we looked at the stress literature, including the Conversation of Resources model (Hobfoll, 1989), which posits that people are motivated to acquire and protect their resources. Psychological stress ensues when those resources are threatened or lost. Such resource depletion is a central facet of job burnout (Shirom, 1989), and continuous stress is associated with emotional exhaustion (Maslach et al., 2001). In mainstream media at the time of this study, “Zoom fatigue” reflected the characteristics of emotional exhaustion (e.g. Grant, 2020; Kretchmer, 2020).

Emotional exhaustion

Emotional exhaustion is a state in which an employee feels emotionally overextended and exhausted by their work (Maslach and Jackson, 1981). A core component of burnout, it is characterized by fatigue and an inability to face the demands of one’s job or engage with people as a result (Maslach et al., 2001). Burnout is highly predictive of intention to quite (Maslach and Jackson, 1981).

Though some people might perceive video meetings as a life raft for interacting “face-to face” while at a distance, virtual work can present challenges to psychological safety, including isolation, loneliness, loss of sense of place, and lack of trust (Handy, 1995). Congruent with Maslach et al. (2001), such challenges represent potential mismatches between the work environment and workers’ personal needs. When there are personal mismatches with (a) workload manageability, (b) social interactions, (c) autonomy and control over decisions, (d), fairness (e) personal values, and (f) rewards and expectations in the work environment, employees become prone to emotional exhaustion.

Workers in a changed world: Stress on resources

Stressors can be experienced as everyday hassles, chronic stressful conditions, or disruptive life events (Aneshensel, 1992; Pearlin, 1999; Thoits, 1995). In work life, everyday hassles can include meetings in general (not just those on camera). For example, Luong and Rogelberg (2005) found the time spent in meetings can affect employee well-being: too many meetings and spending too much time in them relates to higher feelings of fatigue and workload (i.e. loss of resources).

Chronic stressful conditions can include work situations where a person must use resources to engage in emotional labor, including surface acting (Brotheridge and Lee, 2002). Brotheridge and Grandey (2002) maintain surface acting occurs when a person perceives a socially constructed requirement to mask their negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions with positive manifestations. For example, a worker might enhance or fake a smile when they are in a bad mood or interacting with other people they experience as difficult. Surface acting predicts emotional exhaustion, negative mood, and decreased job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2009). Such negative states may have an enduring psychological impact and contribute to turnover in the job (Shanock et al., 2013). When participants in a meeting find it necessary to fake positive emotions, team performance at the group level suffers before and after the meeting (Erks et al., 2017). Surface acting is also strongly related to intent to quit (Shanock et al., 2013).

Dohrenwend et al. (1978) define a disruptive life event as a stressor reflecting an occurrence of sufficient magnitude to change most people’s usual activities. Such events are “acute changes which require major behavioral readjustments within a relatively short period of time” (Thoits, 1995: 54). Though video meetings with colleagues and bosses were not an altogether new workplace communication tool before the advent of COVID-19, the new work-from-home context of the pandemic can be viewed as a disruptive life event. It posed a potential stress on resources because of the significant changes required in workers’ behavior patterns occurring within their domestic environment.

As a substitute for in-person face-to-face workplace meetings, video meetings using various technology platforms became organizations’ “next best” option to get things done. Video meetings allowed teams and other workgroups to communicate synchronously without risk of spreading the virus. Ostensibly, cameras turned on during these remote meetings would provide a greater sense of presence than disembodied voices in telephone conferences or text-based communications via instant messaging or other asynchronous tools, such as email. However, academic literature lacked evidence to support the assumption that video meetings provide an improved sense of presence, and widespread media coverage of “Zoom fatigue” reflected a perceived strain on workers’ resources. Among the stressors video meetings ostensibly included were new conflicts between parental duties and work responsibilities (McCarthy et al., 2020) and feelings of anxiety, isolation, and disconnection (Murphy, 2020).

Conservation of resources model of stress and emotional exhaustion

To illuminate this largely unexplored, new world of worker stress and mismatches with worker needs, we apply Conservation of Resources (COR) theory. According to the COR model of stress (Hobfoll, 1998, 2001), people strive to get and keep valued resources (Brotheridge and Lee, 2002). Emotional exhaustion results when “resources are inadequate to meet work demands, or when the anticipated returns are not obtained on an investment of resources” (Wright and Hobfoll, 2004: 390). This study examines the relationship between potential threats to or loss of resources presented by a sudden reliance on video meetings to conduct work remotely and emotional exhaustion, and how those relationships may vary by some key resources.

Stressors are not equally impactful on everyone as individuals may appraise stressors differently: “individuals cognitively process information about potential stressors in conjunction with their ability to cope with them” (Ganster and Rosen, 2013: 1089). Lazarus and Folkman (1984) maintain the stress process typically begins with a person’s primary appraisal of an encounter as stressful or not, and if so, a secondary appraisal as to what to do about it, triggering coping, which in turn impacts well-being outcomes (Goh et al., 2010). Rather than focusing on a personal appraisal of stressors, COR theory emphasizes circumstances where apparent stressors occur (Hobfoll, 2012). It posits that “stress is neither first nor foremost a product of individuals’ appraisal of events, but that it has central environmental, social, and cultural bases in terms of the demands on people to acquire and protect the circumstances that ensure their well-being and distance themselves from threats to well-being” (Hobfoll and Ford, 2007). In this model of stress, “[I]ndividuals strive to obtain and maintain what they prize or value: resources. Burnout is most likely to occur in situations where there is an actual resources loss, a perceived threat of resource loss, a situation in which one’s resources are inadequate to meet work demands, or when the anticipated returns are not obtained on an investment of resources” (Wright and Hobfoll, 2004: 390). Those resources include energies, personal characteristics, conditions, and objects (Hobfoll, 1989) which can be bolstered or facilitated by social support (Hobfoll, 2001).

Energies

Energies are resources one can invest to obtain other resources, and energies may be valued in and of themselves. Energies include time, money, and knowledge (Hobfoll, 1989). For this study, we explored video meeting load (constituted by the amount of time a person spends in video meetings displaying themselves on camera for at least a significant part of those meetings’ duration) as demand on time resources. Peer-reviewed scholarly literature on in-person meetings demonstrates high meeting load is associated with emotional exhaustion (Luong and Rogelberg, 2005). Hypothesis 1, then, is: Video meeting load is positively related to emotional exhaustion.

In addition, we explored participant perceptions related to the sufficiency or excess of video meeting load, whether they believed it to be too much to accomplish their other job responsibilities. Hypothesis 2, then, is: The degree to which video meetings are perceived as beyond sufficient to accomplish one’s work is positively related to emotional exhaustion.

Also related to energy resources are perceptions about whether the return on investment of time in video meetings is valuable to the participant. Hypothesis 3, then, is: The more workers perceive video meetings as useful to them, the lower the emotional exhaustion.

With work and home life occurring in one place (i.e. remote workers’ homes), we wondered to what extent participants’ family, household, and personal responsibilities competed for the energies needed to do their work successfully. Hypothesis 4, then, is: The more workers experience remote work video meetings as competing for their energy to meet personal, family, and household responsibilities, the greater their emotional exhaustion.

Personal characteristics

Personal characteristics resources are traits and skills that better enable a person to withstand stressful conditions. They include positive affect and seeing events as predictable and happening in one’s best interests (Hobfoll, 1989). They also include attributes that enable a person to achieve their goals or obtain other resources, including a sense of mastery, self-esteem, optimism, job skills, and social skills (Hobfoll, 2001). For this study, we wanted to know whether variations in participants’ self-governance for determining whether to use their camera related to their well-being (emotional exhaustion). Hypothesis 5, then, is: Greater camera autonomy is negatively related to emotional exhaustion.

Similarly, workers might feel compelled to fake emotions to appear happy or optimistic, to comply with social expectations of colleagues and bosses while working from home during a pandemic. We, therefore, explored the extent to which participants engaged in surface acting¹ in their video meetings. Previous studies demonstrate a significant relationship between surface acting and emotional exhaustion (e.g. Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; Shanock et al., 2013). Hypothesis 6, then, is: Surface acting is positively related to emotional exhaustion.

Conditions

These are resources inherent in roles or social circumstances that avail people of opportunities to gain other resources. They include such factors as marital status or seniority (Hobfoll, 1989). Given that studies on in-person meetings demonstrate the significance of gender in conversational interactions and meeting outcomes (e.g. Brescoll, 2012; Gerpott and Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2015), we examined the relationship between gender and emotional exhaustion in the context of video meetings. We also considered whether conditions such as age, minority status, and having children in the home related to video meeting exhaustion. Hypothesis 7, therefore, is statuses of relative disadvantage (e.g. gender of woman, race/ethnic minority, unpartnered, children at home, more junior role rank) are positively associated with emotional exhaustion.

Objects

These resources are valued physical things such as a house (Hobfoll, 2001) or other items with physical or symbolic value that contribute to a person’s sense of status (Hobfoll, 1989). An absence of insights from the stress literature on threats to objects resources presented by video meetings left us considering whether to inquire about the technology-related aspects of video meetings as among relevant object resources. However, we decided that these issues were beyond the scope of what we could study with a parsimonious survey questionnaire, and given the mixed-methods nature of the study, we opted to rely on open-ended questions to allow participants to reveal in qualitative data what object resources, if any, were salient in their experiences. For example, would participants volunteer that a nice background helped make video meetings less exhausting?

Social support

Social support is among the most consistently considered resources in stress literature (Thoits, 1995). Social support for workers may come, for instance, from leaders who act with employees’ well-being in mind (Kossek et al., 2011). Consistent with Homans (1961) social exchange theory, Yoerger et al. (2015) show that meeting attendees who feel encouraged by a leader may tend to mirror that leader’s encouragement, thereby encouraging other attendees. Actions that promote voice and agency in virtual groups may help support a sense of social belonging (Staples and Zhao, 2006) and the psychological safety necessary for authentic participation (Yoerger et al., 2015).

Hobfoll (1989) argues that, while not among the four categories of resources mentioned earlier, social support is itself a resource to the extent that it contributes to the preservation of valued resources. Social support can also detract from resources. An ongoing and long-term investment of resources is necessary to build a network that might provide support during times of stress. When resources are under pressure, efforts to reach out to ask for help can be further taxing on time (energy), self-esteem, self-confidence, sense of mastery (personal characteristics), and status (conditions) resources. For example, seeking social support, then having the supporter take the upper hand to control the situation can diminish one’s resources (Hobfoll, 2001).

The relationships between various sources and forms of social support and video meeting emotional exhaustion remain largely unexplored in the literature due to the relative newness of the large scale, almost overnight move to video meetings for remote work from home. Given that workplace meetings are a social construct (Schwartzman, 1989), we anticipated that social support, or lack of it, could be a significant theme for remote workers. We thought this might be particularly so during what media termed pandemic “lockdown,” where workers were physically isolated from valuable sources of support outside the household. In that novel context, literature provided little evidence as to whether or how workers might experience social support as bolstering or taxing to their resources and how such support would relate to their emotional wellbeing. We, therefore, used a quantitative measure of remote workers’ social support at home and relied on participants’ qualitative responses to explore the role of social support in relationship to video meetings and emotional exhaustion. Hypothesis 8, then, is: Participants’ perceptions of social support at home are associated with less emotional exhaustion related to remote work-from-home video meetings.

Given the magnitude of social and work-related stress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the exploratory nature of this study, we recognized there were likely other potential resources beyond those we anticipated. Consequently, we sought participants’ perceptions through open-ended qualitative questions to learn more about their experiences with video meetings and related emotional exhaustion, as well as their observations about what makes video meetings less taxing and more valuable to them.

In summary, through the COR framework, we examined workers’ self-reported degree of emotional exhaustion as related to video meetings, a relationship previously unexamined through academic rigor. We explored how that context can represent threats to or depletion of their resources and practices that might serve as a means for replenishing their resources.

Method

To explore the research questions about video meeting experiences, emotional exhaustion, and what practices remote workers say would help, we collected quantitative and qualitative data in mid-August 2020 using an anonymous online survey.

Sample

We recruited a convenience sample of participants through multiple channels, such as posting announcements of the study and inviting participation on a professional networking social media platform and sending emails to networks of professional contacts. Criteria for inclusion in the study were that participants be adults aged 18 and older, be employed in the past week at least 20 hours for a U.S.-based organization, have worked 80% or more of those hours remotely, and attended at least one work-related video meeting in the previous week wherein they displayed themselves on camera for most, if not all, of the meeting’s duration. The final sample of useable responses included 345 participants.

Respondents represented 26 different industries (e.g. financial services, education, government, healthcare, real estate, technology, utilities), with no single industry representing more than 13% of the sample. Job types also varied widely; however, the majority (76%) of respondents were managers (junior and senior), executives, consultants/owners, or other professionals, with only 24% of respondents considering themselves support staff. Respondents were 78% white, 74% women, 80% married or otherwise partnered, with an average age of 49 (standard deviation = ±10 years). Appendix 1 summarizes details of the sample. Overall, the sample reflects a cross-section of sectors and white-collar job roles within them that were, perhaps, most affected by the shift from in-person, on-site work to remote work via video meetings.

Measures

Dependent variable: emotional exhaustion

We measured emotional exhaustion, a dimension of burnout, as a well-being outcome, using the emotional exhaustion subscale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Schaufeli et al., 1996). Nine items measure feelings of being emotionally overextended and exhausted at work by asking participants, “How often do you. . .” followed by a series of statements such as “. . .feel emotionally drained from work.” Participants could choose a response to each item using a 7-point frequency scale ranging from “never” (coded 1) to “every day” (coded 7). Factor analysis of these items produced a single dimension with each item loading 0.70 and higher. Together they had strong reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.91. Values were averaged for all nine items comprising the emotional exhaustion scale, scores were normally distributed, and the sample mean was 3.45 (standard deviation = 1.14).

Independent variables and qualitative items

The Conservation of Resources (COR) model of stress (Hobfoll, 1998, 2001) concerns “how employees acquire, maintain, and foster the necessary resources to meet their current work demands and to help guard against further resource deletion” (Wright and Hobfoll, 2004: 390). We sought to explore ways that four categories of resources in this model might be associated with emotional exhaustion related to the sudden and ubiquitous onset of COVID-19 related remote work video meetings. Our measures included variables and qualitative items.

Energies variables

As energy resources relate to time, knowledge, and money, adverse well-being outcomes, like emotional exhaustion, may occur when workers’ ability to obtain or retain these resources are threatened or blocked. In contrast, positive well-being outcomes are predicted when workers have the resources necessary to do their job and when they can use their abilities and satisfy their needs within the work environment (Wright and Hobfoll, 2004). In relation to video meetings, we measured the following energies resources quantitatively:

Video meeting load

An item asked participants the number of hours they spent in video meetings the previous week. A video meeting was defined for participants as “a same-time gathering for work where you are not physically co-located with the other people attending and use the video-streaming function of a virtual meeting platform, such as Zoom or Skype, to display yourself on camera for most or all of the meeting.” Responses originally were coded into five categories: “3 hours or less,” coded 1 (24.9%, n = 86), “4–6 hours,” coded 2 (22.6%, n = 78), “7–10 hours,” coded 3 (12.8%, n = 44), “11–14 hours,” coded 4 (10.4%, n = 36), and “15 or more hours,” coded 5 (29.3%, n = 101). Responses were recoded to the middle value of each category (2, 5, 8.5, 12.5, and 17) in order to treat the variable in analyses as a ratio level measure and for more intuitive interpretation as “hours.” The resulting mean is 9 hours, the median is 8.5 hours, and the standard deviation is 6 hours. Skewness of 0.26 and kurtosis of −1.6 are within normal limits.

Perception that video meeting load is beyond sufficient (exceeds what is needed) to do their job

We hypothesized that workers who perceived their meeting load as more than needed to do their job would experience greater emotional exhaustion. We based our hypothesis on literature about in-person meetings where the research shows that when meetings consume employees’ working hours, they struggle to fulfill their regular job responsibilities and experience stress (Rogelberg et al., 2006). Among our study’s participants, fully 42% viewed their video meetings the previous week as beyond sufficient to do their job. Specifically, 26.4% (n = 91) indicated their video meeting hours were “more than enough,” 11.6% (n = 40) indicated “too many,” and 4.3% (n = 15) indicated “way too many” to fulfill their job responsibilities. In comparison, roughly half (53%) perceived their video meeting time as “enough,” and a very small proportion of participants viewed their hours in video meetings as insufficient by responding “almost enough” (3.5%) or “not nearly enough” (1.7%); we aggregated these with the 53% who reported “enough.” The variable, then, reflects the extent to which video meeting load exceeded what participants believed was needed to do their job.

Perception that video meetings are useful to the participant

Hobfoll (1989) maintains energy resources are typified by their value in helping a person acquire other kinds of resources. We measured the extent to which participants perceived the value of their video meetings by asking to what degree they found their video meetings the prior week to be useful to themselves.

Response options ranged from “not at all useful to me” (coded 1) and indicated by 3% of respondents to “extremely useful to me” (coded 5) and selected by 12% of participants. The median response was “very useful” (47%), though 38% of respondents found their video meetings the previous week to be only “somewhat useful” to themselves.

Perception that personal demands compete for work energy

Professional and personal life responsibilities may present fierce competition for workers’ energy resources. We asked participants the extent to which their family, household, and personal responsibilities were in competition for their energy to do their job successfully. Participants responded using a 4-point scale ranging from “not at all” (coded 1) and indicated by 15% (n = 49) to “to a major extent” (coded 4), also indicated by 15% (n = 51). Although the median response was “to a minor extent” (36.3%, n = 120, M = 2.5), altogether nearly half of participants (49%) reported their family, household, and personal responsibilities competed for their work energy to a “moderate” or a “major” extent.

Qualitative items related to energy resources

Because the phenomenon of widespread work-from-home video meetings was new, we probed for unanticipated factors related to energy resources in participant experiences by asking open-ended questions soliciting qualitative data. Those questions included: “If video meetings (where you show yourself on camera most or all of the time) are exhausting for you, what is it about them that makes them so?,” “What do other people do that helps make video meetings beneficial for you?,” and “What else could people do to make video meetings be beneficial to you?” We designed these questions to elicit data to inform practices or resources that might relieve fatigue or enhance video meeting experiences.

Personal characteristics variables

Personal characteristics resources include aspects of personality, self-concept, and positive affectivity (Wright and Hobfoll, 2004) and related strivings of self-presentation necessary for psychological consistency and consequent well-being (Hülsheger and Schewe, 2011). In relation to video meetings, we measured the following personal characteristics quantitatively:

Self-governance related to camera autonomy

We explored whether having autonomy with turning one’s camera on or off during remote work video meetings might serve as a resource related to personal characteristics (e.g. self-concept, self-presentation). Though not conceived or tested yet in the stress literature, we thought such a resource might be salient in the context of video meetings: autonomy and control over decisions represent one of six aspects of the work environment that can, if there is a mismatch with one’s personal needs, require emotional labor and contribute to burnout (Maslach et al., 2001). We asked participants to consider in how many video meetings the previous week they felt they could freely choose to turn off their camera without fear of negative repercussions. Response options ranged along a 5-point scale from “all of them” (coded 5) to “none of them” (coded 1), with a higher score reflecting greater camera autonomy. Forty percent of participants felt they could turn off their camera in “all” or “most” video meetings, 21% reported they could do so in “some of them,” and 39% reported feeling free to turn off their camera in only a “few” or “none” of their video meetings.

Surface acting

We adapted the seven-item surface acting scale (Grandey et al., 2005, which includes items from Brotheridge and Lee’s, 2003 scale). We asked participants, “In your video meetings where you showed yourself on camera over the last full work week, how much of the time did you. . .”² followed by a series of statements, such as “. . .put on an act in order to deal with others in an appropriate way” and “. . . fake a good mood.” Participants responded using a Likert frequency scale ranging from 1 (“never/not at all”) to 5 (“always/constantly”). They were factor analyzed for validity in this sample, producing a single dimension with each item loading 0.80 and higher, and tested for reliability resulting in a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.94. Scores were averaged for all seven items comprising the surface acting scale with a mean of 2.4 (standard deviation = 0.91).

Qualitative items related to personal characteristics

We posed open-ended questions to probe for the potential of further personal characteristics resources that might be implicated in emotional exhaustion as part of video meeting experiences. These questions included, “What comes to mind when you think about your work-related video meetings where you show yourself on camera most or all of the meeting?”

Conditions variables

Conditions resources reflect circumstances associated with holding statuses, such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, marital status, having children at home, and the presence of social support. The survey questionnaire included items eliciting data from respondents on a host of basic personal and professional sociodemographic characteristics, reported in Appendix 1. Variables included gender, race/ethnicity, age, marital/partner status, presence of children in the home, the proportion of responsibility for childcare and household labor, as well as participants’ work industry/sector. We conducted extensive exploratory analyses examining how these characteristics might relate to key study variables. We found only two sociodemographic variables to be significantly related to key study variables: gender and age, as described in the following paragraphs. For parsimony, we omitted the non-significant variables from further analyses.

Gender

Among the 345 respondents, 74% (n = 254) identified their gender as “woman” (coded 1) and 26% (n = 91) identified as “man” (coded 0). No participant selected a non-binary identification among the options we provided.

Age

We asked participants to report their age in years. Responses were normally distributed and ranged from 23 to 77 years of age, with a mean of 49.4 (standard deviation = 10.4 years).

Qualitative items related to conditions

Our open-ended questions were designed such that conditions resources, if salient to participants, could emerge as qualitative themes.

Social support variable: Social support at home

To measure social support quantitatively, we used a single item (adapted from Aneshensel, 1992) that asked participants how true for them it is that “In my household, there is another adult who gives me affection, encouragement, or approval, or acts in ways that helps me feel secure.” Responses ranged from “very untrue” (coded 1) to “very true” (coded 5). Among valid responses (n = 333), 12% (n = 40) reported this was “very untrue,” 3% indicated this was “somewhat untrue,” 3.6% chose “neither true nor untrue” for their response. For the vast majority, this statement was “somewhat true” (12.9%, n = 43) or “very true” (68.5%, n = 228), resulting in a skewed measure (−1.62).

Qualitative item related to social support

In an open-ended question soliciting qualitative data, we asked participants what other people do to make work video meetings less exhausting. This question was designed to elicit insights on aspects of social support from coworkers (including leaders) that might improve video meeting practices.

Integration of mixed methods

Given the magnitude of social upheaval during the COVID-19 pandemic and the relative newness of the phenomenon of prolific video meetings for nearly universal remote work, we recognized limitations to the factors we could anticipate and measure quantitatively and the need to solicit participants’ perceptions and experiences of video meetings in their own words, particularly since there was much about worker perceptions of this novel phenomenon we could not anticipate. Open-ended items eliciting qualitative data were interspersed among the close-ended items at relevant points in the questionnaire. The aim was to create a complement between quantitative and qualitative, what we could anticipate and what we could not, so that we could explore and identify aspects of video meetings that people say are taxing or beneficial and what they say other people do that contribute to these outcomes. At the end of the questionnaire, we offered a final open-ended item inviting participants to make comments of their choosing. Our intention with this question was to ensure that if participants had more to share about their experiences and thoughts related to video meetings beyond what we explicitly asked, they had the opportunity to add that information to the data and the study’s findings.

Results

We approached the question of what video meeting experiences relate to emotional exhaustion, and what practices remote workers say would help from the lens of the stress and burnout literature (e.g. Hobfoll, 1989, 2001; Maslach et al., 2001). We remained mindful that our investigation was exploratory given the unprecedented nature of the sudden onset of widespread reliance on video meetings for remote work from home due to COVID-19. We anticipated some threats to resources as reflected in our quantitative measures. We sought participants’ qualitative insights on beneficial and detrimental video meeting practices for remote work through open-ended questions in the survey. Below, we present the results of the study, integrating quantitative and qualitative findings.

Bivariate correlations among resources and emotional exhaustion

Table 1 reports the bivariate correlations and distribution of study variables in the sample. At the bivariate level, the four hypotheses concerning the relationships between energies resources and emotional exhaustion are supported: video meeting load and video meeting time beyond sufficiency for one’s job are positively correlated with emotional exhaustion (r = 0.14, p < 0.05 and r = 0.43, p < 0.01, respectively). The more useful workers find video meetings, the lower their emotional exhaustion (r = −0.29, p < 0.01). And the greater the perceived competition of personal responsibilities for work energy, the greater the emotional exhaustion (r = 0.25, p < 0.01). Of the personal characteristics we quantitatively tested for correlation with emotional exhaustion, camera autonomy (Hypothesis 5) was not related to emotional exhaustion, but surface acting was (r = 0.57, p < 0.01), thus providing support for Hypothesis 6. Among conditions resources we considered (Hypothesis 7), gender was not directly related to emotional exhaustion, but age was negatively associated with emotional exhaustion (r = 1.16, p < 0.01). Finally, in regard to Hypothesis 8, social support at home was unrelated to emotional exhaustion or to any other study variables, perhaps due to a ceiling effect as the vast majority of respondents (more than 80%) reported it was “true” or “very true” they had support at home.

Table 1.

Emotional exhaustion; energies, personal characteristics, and conditions resources; and social support: bivariate correlations and descriptive statistics (N = 345).

Variable	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Dependent variable
1. Emotional Exhaustion	—
Stressors
2. Video meeting load hours	0.14*	—
3. Video meeting hours exceed sufficiency to do my job	0.43**	0.31**	—
Energies resources
4. Video meetings are useful to participant	–0.29**	0.11*	–0.33**	—
5. Personal responsibilities compete for work energy	0.25**	0.03	0.13*	–0.11	—
Personal characteristics resources
6. Surface acting	0.57**	–0.09	0.30**	–0.29**	0.23**	—
Conditions resources
7. Camera autonomy	–0.09	–0.21**	–0.20**	0.04	–0.05	–0.19**	—
8. Gender	0.10	–0.05	–0.02	0.16**	0.16**	–0.07	0.14*	—
9. Age	–0.16**	0.11*	–0.16**	0.17**	–0.23**	0.01	–0.18**	0.00	—
10. Social support at home	–0.07	–0.01	–0.07	0.09	0.04	–0.05	–0.05	–0.07	–0.02	—
M	3.45	8.99	1.63	2.68	2.50	3.00	2.40	0.74	49.43	4.23
SD	1.14	6	0.85	0.73	0.93	1.37	0.91	0.44	10.37	1.37
Range	1–7	2–17	1–4	1–4	1–4	1–5	1–5	0–1	23–77	1–5
α	0.91						0.94

We examined the possibility of collinearity through regression diagnostics, such as VIF statistics, and there was no evidence of multicollinearity among study variables in the quantitative analyzes.

Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (two-tailed).

Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (two-tailed).

Regression analysis: Predicting video meeting emotional exhaustion

As shown in Table 2 below, we regressed emotional exhaustion on the quantitative measures for three of the four categories of resources in the Conservation of Resource model (Hobfoll, 1998, 2001): energies, personal characteristics, and conditions.³ This model accounts for 41% of the variation in emotional exhaustion in this sample of remote workers R² = 0.41, F = 29.71, p < 0.001). Following the table, we discuss the findings related to each category of resources, ordered by hypotheses, integrating the quantitative and qualitative results for parsimony and coherence.

Table 2.

Regression of emotional exhaustion on stressors, energies, personal characteristics, and conditions resources (n = 339).

Variable	B	SE B	β
Stressors
Video meeting load	0.02	0.01	0.13**
Video meetings exceed what is needed to do job	0.31	0.07	0.23***
Energies resources
Video meetings are useful to participant	−0.14	0.07	−0.09
Personal responsibilities compete for work energy	0.11	0.06	0.09*
Personal characteristics resources
Surface acting	0.59	0.06	0.47***
Conditions resources
Camera autonomy	0.07	0.04	0.08
Gender (women)	0.13	0.11	0.05
Age	−0.002	0.01	−0.02
Adjusted R ²	0.41
F	29.71***

We examined the possibility of collinearity through regression diagnostics, such as VIF statistics, and there was no evidence of multicollinearity among study variables in this analysis.

p < 0.05. **p < 0.01. *** p < 0.001.

Energies resources

H1: Video meeting load is positively related to emotional exhaustion (β = 0.13, p < 0.05). The vast majority of participants (n = 331) responded to open-ended questions about experiences with video meetings, and 78% characterized them as an exhausting burden. When describing what comes to mind when they think of video meetings, many responses were tersely stated and included these words: exhaustion, draining, takes a lot of energy, tiring, fatigue, stressful, annoyed, deep concern, dread, frustrated, hate, self-conscious, unfair, want to hide, ugh, feel surveilled, and uncomfortable. Many participants commented on their number of meetings as problematic, particularly if that number was more than typical for them pre-pandemic. Nonetheless, 22% of this study’s participants did not find their video meetings tiring; some even reported feeling energized, excited, joyful, refreshed, and glad about them.

H3: The more workers perceive video meetings as useful to them, the lower the emotional exhaustion approaches significance (β = −0.09, p < 0.06). It appears that a potential means to reduce emotional exhaustion from video meetings is to use them only when needed and make them useful.

In qualitative responses, some workers appreciated the utility of video meetings. As one respondent expressed: “The upside to video meetings is the reach—so many more people can participate. And COVID-19 has made scheduling so much easier because everyone is around. Most of all, despite my ambivalence around video meetings, I am grateful to have a job in this moment.”

Conversely, a preponderance of qualitative data emphasized uselessness as a stressor. Many participants expressed cynicism about the necessity of video meetings with rhetorical question-responses such as: “Is this really necessary? I can accomplish the same through just a phone call,” “Is this necessary every day as we work remote?,” and “Pointless, could have been an email.”

H4: The more workers experience remote work video meetings as competing for their energy to meet personal, family, and household responsibilities, the greater their emotional exhaustion is confirmed (β = 0.09, p < 0.05). The qualitative data, too, reflect the stress of conflicting responsibilities, distractions, and interruptions with remote work from home. One participant captured a widely expressed sentiment: “I do love my job, but the current environment of working from home every day, most of which is on video calls or regular calls while caring for children, is a bit exhausting. It feels like [the movie] Groundhog Day—every day is the same thing.” Another worker said, “Get to the point. I have a toddler and my clients calling me, and I frankly don’t care about the game stats.” Work and home life formerly occurred in two separate spaces and in remote work-from-home are now compressed into a single space, and that, at least for some respondents in the study, is emotionally exhausting.

Personal characteristics resources

H5. Greater camera autonomy is negatively related to emotional exhaustion approaches significance when controlling for the other factors in this study (β = 0.08, p < 0.07), but the issue of camera control is more nuanced than just how many meetings allow a person to freely turn off their camera. In qualitative responses, participants told us that having the option to turn their cameras off was important to them for reasons that extend beyond matters of personal appearance. For instance, some workers related camera control to freedom to reduce distractions and facilitate engagement. In response to the item asking what makes video meetings less exhausting, one participant said, “When facilitators make it optional to keep the camera off. Remaining in front of the camera for an extended period of time uses energy. When the camera is off, and I can simply listen to the facilitator without being seen, it allows me to listen to the content on a deeper level . . . have some private space to process and internalize the material shared.” Another remote worker said, “I think it would be better if it were acceptable to turn my camera off.” Another respondent wrote, “I would prefer to turn my video off. They take more energy than meetings with no video.” One participant made a pointed plea: “Leave it up to joiners to turn on the camera or turn it back off at any time.”

H6. Surface acting is positively related to emotional exhaustion is demonstrated, and the relationship is strongly positive (β = 0.47, p < 0.001), even when controlling for other contributing factors associated with video meetings. About half the sample reported being aware of engaging in some form of surface acting at least “some of the time” in video meetings. Thematic results in the qualitative data are consistent with the quantitative findings: participants indicated they were making efforts to fake a good mood or otherwise display positive affect, and hiding/masking/suppressing their true feelings, and that doing so was emotionally exhausting. Participants also indicated continuously striving in video meetings, using emotional energy, to monitor their on-camera performance so others would see them as credible and capable. Given the abundance of qualitative data relevant to this theme, it is unsurprising that surface acting accounts for more of the variance in emotional exhaustion than the other variables together. Still, this study’s quantitative measure of surface acting may not capture the full range of surface acting that occurs in video meetings since it was not originally designed for that purpose. Therefore, this study’s quantitative results may underestimate the emotional labor people do to keep up appearances in video meetings.

Conditions resources

H7. Statuses of relative disadvantage (e.g. gender of woman, race/ethnic minority, unpartnered, children at home, more junior role rank) are positively associated with emotional exhaustion was not demonstrated as statistically significant in the quantitative measures used in this study. However, they were pronounced in the qualitative data. Women frequently commented, more than did men, on their awareness and concern for their appearance, often in ways that contrasted with their experiences of in-person work. They commented on their self-criticism while seeing themselves as if in a mirror all day. Minority men noted uncertainty about expectations for attire, and intentionality about dressing in business attire to maintain credibility while seeing their White peers appear in casual clothes and inferring that, because of their race, Whites could so without threat to their credibility.

Social support resources

H8: Participants’ perceptions of social support at home are associated with less emotional exhaustion related to remote work-from-home video meetings was not supported. However, participants’ qualitative responses produced abundant evidence that social support among co-workers in video meetings helps alleviate emotional exhaustion related to video meetings. Among the themes in the qualitative data were allowing for personal connection and facilitating turn-taking.

Allowing for personal connection

While some participants made clear their distaste for non-work “chit chat” in video meetings, those complaints were overshadowed by the predominant perceptions that non-work, interpersonal conversation promotes stress relief. Participants said what makes video meetings less exhausting is: “Connections right before the meeting starts” and “taking the time for ‘connections’ in response to a relatively risk-free prompt.” Participants said what other people could do to make video meetings less exhausting includes “not [being] so obsessive about staying to a timed agenda. Leave room for connection and discussion.”

Facilitating turn-taking

According to this study’s participants, another way co-workers (including meeting leaders) can provide social support to make video meetings less exhausting is by promoting good turn-taking. Sample responses to what makes video meetings exhausting included “Talking heads that go on and on without checking in with the audience” and “People who take over the meeting and belabor their point.” In response to the item asking what other people could do to make video meetings less tiring, participants said, “Don’t dominate. Create a rhythm for conversation,” and “Listen, don’t take over.” One respondent said, “After a few sentences, speakers should check in, specifically asking ‘Did I get that right?’ and ‘Did that answer your question?’ I have found when I do that, it moves the meeting along well.”

Objects resources

We had no hypotheses about object resources, as included in the COR model (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001), that might be related to emotional exhaustion, and the range of possibilities was too great to incorporate efficiently in close-ended items for an online survey questionnaire. So, we relied on the participants’ responses to open-ended questions to identify object resources that they say contribute to or relieve emotional exhaustion related to video meetings. Very few responses reflected the value of, or threats to/loss of object resources. For example, mention of internet bandwidth, virtual backgrounds, a nice office environment, and appropriate lighting or microphones were almost non-existent in the data. These factors may be important to people’s remote work experiences, but they were largely not evoked by asking participants about video meeting exhaustion or usefulness.

Discussion

Tracy and Dimock (2004) discussed how workplace meetings served as places of opportunity for information exchange, relationship building, and making plans for action-taking, all of which are essential to organizational and individual success. In 2020, the venue for those opportunities became upended: the workplace disruption of widespread remote work due to COVID-19 led to new adoption and high reliance on video meetings to replace in-person work-related gatherings. Practitioners have little empirical evidence to help them understand why those video meetings were and continue to be so taxing, much less what to do about “Zoom fatigue” so that video meetings can be the new places of opportunity as identified by Tracy and Dimock. By exploring the video meeting experiences workers perceived as related to their emotional exhaustion and practices they said would help, this study begins to fill that knowledge gap.

In the immediately-following pages, we discuss our findings that, congruent with Conservation of Resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989), workers’ well-being—their resilience to stress versus succumbing to emotional exhaustion—has much to do with how video meetings require them to expend their resources. It also has to do with whether they experience their use of resources being buffered, replenished, or otherwise conserved. Our findings show threats of loss or actual loss of remote workers’ energy and personal characteristics resources as defined by Hobfoll (1989) are particularly related to the relationship between video meetings and emotional exhaustion. Conditions resources associated with different forms of status are implicated, as well. Together, these results, and the absence of clear themes related to objects resources in our qualitative data, suggest social support foci for organizational interventions.

Energies resources and diminished well-being

In our quantitative analyses, time spent in video meetings displaying oneself on camera for at least a significant part of those meetings’ duration predicted emotional exhaustion. Perception of that time as too much—beyond what is needed to accomplish one’s job responsibilities—is strongly related to emotional exhaustion. Perceived uselessness of video meetings and the strain of balancing personal and work responsibilities adds to workers’ distress. Qualitative data themes corroborated too-frequent video meetings induce emotional exhaustion. Other corroborating themes included participant views that attending too many video meetings to get one’s work done, thus having to work longer hours than before work-from-home orders, contributes to emotional exhaustion. Perceptions that video meetings are not useful, “a waste,” were among the widely-represented themes in the qualitative data.

Participants said video meetings are less exhausting and a more useful investment of time when meeting leaders convey a specific purpose and goal for each meeting and support it with a well-planned agenda sent in advance along with other meeting-relevant information. These themes are consistent with evidence about valuable face-to-face meeting practices (Geimer et al., 2015) and research in which poor or inadequate preparation ranked fourth among the 22 most bothersome meeting problems (Romano and Nunamaker, 2001). Kauffeld and Lehmann-Willenbrock (2012) also substantiate the usefulness of planning. Other studies show planning should include creating and conveying an agenda in advance that helps those who will attend to prepare to perform their roles (e.g. Nixon and Littlepage, 1992). These energies-saving practices are widely supported by meeting science literature, but according to this study’s participants, largely missing in video meetings. Our study’s participants say planning should also include judicious decisions about the frequency and purpose of video meetings and whether a meeting is the best tool for communication.

Personal characteristics resources and diminished well-being

In our quantitative analyses, surface acting was the strongest predictor of emotional exhaustion. Camera autonomy approached significance but had a weak relationship to emotional exhaustion, but qualitative data clarified that surface acting occurs because cameras are often compulsory. Participants’ responses to qualitative items show that providing remote workers with the freedom to choose whether and when to display themselves on camera without fear of negative judgment may reduce emotional exhaustion.

While almost equally divided in their desire for “all cameras on,” “cameras off,” or “cameras optional” preferences, participants’ comments about camera use refer to the impact of that use on their personal characteristics resources. Participants who wanted everyone to have cameras on appreciated getting information by seeing others’ facial expressions and reading reactions to their performance (e.g. “are they tracking?,” i.e. suggesting a consumption of others’ personal characteristics of positive affect, mastery, or social skills). Those who wanted to have their cameras off but feared negative repercussions if they did so reported a compulsion to continuously smile or wear a mask (i.e. surface act). They cited the strain of always “having to be ‘on, upbeat,’” the fear that others might read their looking away from the camera as a lack of attention (suggesting a threat to seeing things in their best interests). Those who wanted cameras optional indicated their need for a reprieve from an intense visual focus on the content of the meeting. Those participants said directives to show themselves on camera distract from their ability to listen attentively (i.e. suggesting a threat to their personal characteristic ability to experience mastery). Altogether, these conflicting needs suggest an imperative for organizations to establish camera-use norms that relate to the stated goal of the meeting so that the answer to the question “Why do they need to see my face?,” as asked by one participant, is made transparent.

Of note, qualitative data also suggests recognizing the strains of video meetings on resources while framing video meeting experiences in terms of benefits allows some participants to tolerate better the toll these meetings take. Congruent with Hobfoll (2001), this theme suggests seeing things as happening in one’s best interests was a trait that enabled those participants to withstand the stressful conditions of virtual group work during a pandemic.

Social support and well-being

Qualitative data themes suggest that displays of social support among co-workers (including one’s leader) in video meetings make video meetings less exhausting and more beneficial. Those forms of social support are reflected in Table 3. They include providing opportunities for personal connection and facilitating turn-taking.

Table 3.

Practice implications for video meetings.

Meeting practice	Guidance from this study’s findings	Excerpts from study participants,in their own words
Schedule judiciously.In our study, the significance of meeting load in relation to emotional exhaustion is consistent with findings on in-person meetings (e.g. Luong and Rogelberg, 2005).	Have fewer video meetings.Optimally, have fewer than 7 hours per week and no more than 12 hours per week per worker.In this study, seven or more hours of video meetings the previous week correlated with emotional exhaustion and peaked at 12 or more hours.	What makes video meetings so tiring?• “Too many in one day so I cannot get other tasks done.”• “Companies have mistakenly associated ‘more meetings’ with more productivity and that is not the case. The level of focus time is the issue.”• “Some days are overloaded with four or five of these meetings: that amount of time on Zoom causes the fatigue.”
Use alternatives.	Consider voice-only or email instead.If seeing faces is not necessary to achieve the goal, use conference calls or asynchronous written communication instead to eliminate synchronous screen time pressure.	When thinking about video meetings, what comes to mind?• “It could have been an email.”• “Why do they need to see my face?”• “Let’s just do a phone call.”
Prepare.When leaders enable attendees’ preparation before meetings, they enhance meeting effectiveness (Allen et al., 2012; Schwartzman, 1989).	Leaders: prepare, so others can too.Design the agenda so that it meets the group’s needs for accomplishing the stated goal. Send it to invitees in advance, along with other meeting-related information, so they can prepare to perform their roles appropriately and credibly.	What makes video meetings so tiring?• “When we talk about things we don’t need to be talking about for the purpose of the meeting.”• “When folks aren’t prepared.”• “I am fine with them if I know they are on my schedule and plan for them.”
Enable group effectiveness.Small talk is essential to group effectiveness (McCarthy, 2003; Mirivel and Tracy, 2005).	Designate time for social connection.Carve out a specific time at the agenda’s beginning for small talk to build relationships, create trust, and get social support while putting boundaries on its length.	What can others do to make video meetings less tiring for you?• “Have some small talk, say hello before launching in.”• “Any small talk or funny story helps ease transitions.”• “Feel free to make more small talk and connection, not just be task-focused.”
Facilitate participation.Turn-taking enables video meeting attendees to jointly contribute to accomplishing the meeting goal (Halvorsen and Sarangi, 2015) and provides a positive experience sustained by speaker changes (Lehmann-Willenbrock et al., 2016).	Ensure turn-taking among attendees.Provide social support by inviting only the people needed to contribute to the conversation and enable those people to do so freely. Use facilitation methods that encourage attendees to speak on matters about which they have knowledge, and promote attendees’ allowing space for each other’s contributions.	What makes video meetings so tiring?• “Unskilled facilitator who doesn’t manage or help the group manage turn-taking.”• “Talking heads that go on and on without checking in with the audience.”• “Sometimes people are too long-winded and do not stay on course, which extends the meetings and decreases the overall productivity.”• “It’s a good chance to connect if everyone has a chance to participate but not useful if just one person does all the talking.”
Give autonomy.Autonomy is related to dignity and well-being experiences (Bolton, 2007).	Make camera use optional.If it is essential to see faces to accomplish the stated goal of the meeting, say so and say why.Otherwise, establish camera autonomy as the norm: allow attendees to freely choose whether to display themselves on camera without fear of negative consequences regardless of their choice.Explicitly indicate the camera norms for each meeting, making camera use optional as much as possible. There are many reasons video meeting participants might prefer to turn off their camera, including better engagement with the content.	When thinking about video meetings, what comes to mind?• “How much I have to monitor my facial reactions.”• “I hate it, unfair, we didn’t use cameras for meeting before the pandemic, why now.”What makes video meetings so tiring?• “Having to pretend you’re engaged.”• “Feeling like you have to be upbeat.”• “You have to be ‘up’ and have to channel a lot of energy . . . I have to manufacture the energy to do that.”• “Having to feel ‘on’ the entire time because you are never sure who is looking at you.”• “Visuals distract me from meaning/content, so having to look at the camera and people means I’m not getting as much content/meaning.”• “I’m annoyed that someone says, “Turn on your camera” bc [sic] I’m like ‘if you don’t have to do your hair and makeup, then you shouldn’t be making that request.’”What can others do to make them less tiring for you?• “I would prefer to have my camera off.”

To constitute a theme, at least 10% of the sample who provided qualitative data (n = 259) must have referenced the topic in their responses to open-ended questions.

Personal connection

In American culture, people tend to prefer some small talk in their work-related interactions (Köhler et al., 2012). In our study, while some participants openly resented “chit chat,” viewing it as a waste of time, most participants in this study who commented on small talk indicated that it made their video meetings more beneficial and less emotionally exhausting. This finding aligns with research demonstrating that small talk is a significant predictor of meeting effectiveness (Allen et al., 2014). Indeed, talk that precedes formal business discussion has the function of building rapport and trust that makes it easier to get things done (Mirivel and Tracy, 2005). According to some participants in this study, it seems that allowing small talk while putting boundaries on its length can satisfy those who need it and allay fears that it will go on too long and waste too much time.

Turn-taking

Facilitating turn-taking applies primarily to video meeting leaders. In response to the question asking what might make video meetings less exhausting, one of the many participant remarks coded to the turn-taking theme was “no talking heads.” In response to the question asking what others can do to make video meetings more useful, one of the many turn-taking remarks was “ask me questions.” Halvorsen and Sarangi (2015) support the value of taking conversational turns, saying that shifts in conversational roles within a meeting allows participants to cumulatively add to decision-making based on their role, responsibility, and expertise.

Practice implications for human resources and organizational use of video meetings

Table 3 encapsulates our key findings for improving practice. In the table is a further sampling of verbatim participant remarks coded to each practice. We organize this table based on a synthesis of our quantitative and qualitative findings.

Limitations of the study

The primary limitations of this study include the use of a convenience sample, the narrow range of independent variables selected for the study, and the timing of the study. The convenience sample of n = 345 represents a broad mix of employment sectors, occupations, and job roles; however, women, whites, upper income, and older workers are over-represented compared to the general population of workers. As we do not know how representative the sample is of the total population of work-related video meeting users, our results should be generalized with caution.

We limited the number of independent variables out of concern for potentially adding to participants’ daily burden of cognitive or emotional strain when participating in the study and the risk of recall bias due to their upended work structures and the broader set of pandemic-related stressors. For example, our video meeting load measurement did not extend past the previous 1-week period. We did not measure all potential stressors, such as incidence of COVID-19 in the home, job responsibilities or workload, or recent changes in job or workload.

It is possible that the strong correlation between surface acting in video meetings and related emotional exhaustion is spurious. We also did not control for negative affectivity (neuroticism) as a personal characteristic which has been found elsewhere in a variety of different contexts to account for the relationship between surface acting and emotional exhaustion (i.e. Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; Hülsheger and Schewe, 2011). We did consider that video meetings might be less burdensome for workers with more outward orientation in interactions. In analyses not shown we controlled for positive affectivity (extraversion), which was unrelated to emotional exhaustion and did not change the relationship between video meeting surface acting and emotional exhaustion in this sample. Still, given the literature that identifies personality traits as important beyond the emotional labor of surface acting in predicting emotional exhaustion, negative affectivity should be incorporated in future studies on video meetings and well-being.

In this concurrent mixed-methods study, we included only one quantitative measure of social support: we asked about social support from someone in the home. Many more social support variables might be statistically significant if measured. For example, facilitating good turn-taking emerged qualitatively as a form of social support provided or facilitated by a meeting leader. Participant remarks were congruent with Hobfoll’s (2001) description of the buffering or relief effect on personal characteristics resources such as skills and attributes that enable a person to achieve their goals. However, we did not quantitatively measure turn-taking as a form of social support. Therefore, we cannot statistically examine its potential role in alleviating video meeting exhaustion. Further, we do not know quantitatively when video meetings become perceived as “too much” to perform a job or what constitutes a useful meeting. Instead, we draw upon the workers’ own words in responses to open items in our questionnaire.

Time boundaries with the meeting load variable (i.e. the survey directed participants to recall their video meetings over the previous work week) and the nature of the sample (i.e. workers presumably facing daily job demands with deadlines) did not lend a practical examination of stress appraisals (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984, 1987) of video meeting encounters as a challenge, threat, or situation presenting harm to or loss of resources. These appraisals may occur and be interrelated over time with past experiences of video meetings informing future expectations and appraisals.

It is also possible that participants had a heightened awareness of “Zoom fatigue” from accounts at the time in the popular press and casual conversation. This may have contributed to some response bias. In addition, because the pandemic response was a novel experience and remote work in that broader societal context was unprecedented, the study may have overlooked other salient facets of workers’ experiences with video meetings while working from home.

Directions for future research

This exploratory study suggests four broad potential directions for future research. One suggestion is using an action research approach to examine the efficacy of specific practices identified by participants in this study (see Table 3 in previous pages) within specific organizational contexts. Second, using different measures to explore the impact of remote work video meetings on well-being may identify new opportunities for interventions and refined practices. For example, considerable time has elapsed since the disruptive life event of the massive move to work from home; research might explore how variations in primary and secondary appraisals of stressors shape workers’ sense of the stakes, challenges, threats, or opportunities with video meetings. Also, controlling for additional factors, like workload and personality traits such as negative affectivity, might add nuance to understanding the role of video meetings in remote work-related stress. Third, future studies might use larger and more representative samples to quantitatively examine the qualitative themes presented in this study. Fourth, future research might quantitatively examine ways that different sources and forms of enacted social support reduce the deleterious impacts of remote work on emotional energy and other well-being outcomes.

Conclusion

This study explored video meeting experiences that virtual workers perceive as emotionally exhausting and practices that help or can aid their psychological well-being. Oversufficiency and lack of benefit of video meetings, the degree to which time in video meetings competed with remote workers’ other job and personal responsibilities, and surface acting under the camera’s gaze predicted emotional exhaustion. Participants in this study described how social support from colleagues, including those who set the norms for group behavior, lessened their video meeting stress.

The evidence presented in this study suggests practical guidance for alleviating the stress conditions associated with video meetings. Among those practices are limiting workers’ load of video meetings by having fewer of them and using alternative communication modes. In addition, meeting leaders can mitigate the pressure attendees feel to surface act by creating new norms that reduce time on-camera, providing autonomous choice in camera use while relating camera-use to meeting goals, and enabling attendees to prepare. We describe social support practices that are seen as a resource, including allowing delimited time for personal connection and facilitating conversational turns.

Organizations have a vested interest in creating processes and developing employee behaviors that prevent burnout and cynicism (Levenson, 2017). Individuals do, too. Video meeting attendees’ desire for practices that reduce emotional exhaustion (and thereby potential burnout and cynicism) is reflected in the ambivalence expressed in this comment from a remote work participant in the study: “I really like that I don’t have to commute, but I also really hate video meetings. I’m not sure which is worse: a 2–3 hour commute each way or 2 hours of video meetings every day.”

It is not just the emotional exhaustion of “Zoom fatigue” that people experience; video meetings can be a rewarding source of productivity and social connection. The well-being that can manifest when video meetings are not a drain is reflected in a comment from another study participant:

“Work-related video meetings have been an extremely valuable tool for my business. I am very grateful for the technology and the willingness of my entire staff and clients to have gone ‘virtual’ during these difficult times. I’ve even begun to virtually connect with people I didn’t know previously in order to expand my network. I truly love these video meetings and will not be going back to the in-person networking and meetings I’ve previously done.”

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-gjh-10.1177_23970022221094532 – Supplemental material for Remote work video meetings: Workers’ emotional exhaustion and practices for greater well-being

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-gjh-10.1177_23970022221094532 for Remote work video meetings: Workers’ emotional exhaustion and practices for greater well-being by Betty J Johnson and J Beth Mabry in German Journal of Human Resource Management: Zeitschrift für Personalforschung

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix 1.

Characteristics of the Sample.

Variable	n	%	M	SD	LL	UL
Demographic characteristics
Gender (women)	345	73.6
Age	345		49.4	10.4	23	77
Race/ethnicity (non-white)	345	22.0
First language not English	345	6.1
Relationship status: Partnered	345	79.1
One or more children in home	332	42.8
No other non-spousal adults in the home	331	75.8
Job role	345
Support staff		23.8
Manager		14.5
Contractor/small business owner		15.1
Senior manager		24.6
Advanced professional		5.2
C-level executive		16.8
Industry
Advertising/marketing/PR	12	3.4
Agriculture	1	0.3
Airlines/aerospace	2	0.6
Automotive	3	0.8
Business support/logistics	7	2.0
Construction	1	0.3
Consumer goods/retail	19	5.4
Defense	1	0.3
Education	37	10.5
Electronics	1	0.3
Entertainment/leisure	1	0.3
Finance/financial services	44	12.4
Food/beverages	4	1.1
Government	15	4.2
Healthcare provider	19	5.4
Insurance	4	1.1
Management consulting	33	9.3
Manufacturing	25	7.1
Nonprofit	38	10.7
Pharmaceuticals	5	1.4
Real estate	4	1.1
Telecommunications	3	0.8
Technology	31	8.8
Training/coaching	20	5.6
Transportation/delivery	2	0.6
Utilities/energy/extraction	21	5.9
2019 household income $100k+	319	89
Expect no 2020 income change	329	74

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Betty J Johnson

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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