Why You Won’t Catch Me “On-Camera” in Virtual Meetings

Mar 30

It was with a heavy cloud of dread descending on me that I realized, circa July 2020, that an expectation had infiltrated the world of work in policy advocacy that I found decidedly illogical, and therefore, rejected. I’ve never been keen on doing things simply because they are the latest, mindless trend advanced by people who apparently never gave their utility or propriety, their costs and benefits, a second thought. The camera-on virtual meeting frenzy, and the expectation that every single meeting needed to be a V-Con, fell into this category from the beginning of the pandemic for me, and I don’t see any good reason for changing that position.

Fortunately, being in business for myself now means I really don’t have to explain my decision to keep my camera off — though I often throw in a self-deprecatory not-untrue comment about not being able to get my super curly, naturally frizzy hair together that day — when I announce that I’ll be off camera to clients and partners. Truth be told, nine times out of ten the other party(ies) seem grateful for the implicit permission to remove themselves from the microscope as well. I know I’m not alone, so I decided to lay out my rationale for only rarely going on-camera, to support my fellow Zoom-cam rebels. Sources in support of my positions are at the end. Here is why I am a staunch advocate for cameras-off, except in limited circumstances (which I’ll delineate below):

1. On-camera = Zoom fatigue: by now most of us have heard of it, and it’s been demonstrated repeatedly; being on camera takes more energy and contributes to more burnout than simply having a phone/camera-off conversation. I’ll write more on burnout in a future article, but one of the core causes of burnout is excessive emotional labor, defined as “the management of feelings to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display.” Note that the only reason to be on camera for a Zoom call is to create a publicly available observable facial and bodily display. By their very nature, on-camera meetings exact emotional labor from participants in a new and challenging way, that also happens to cause eye fatigue, motionlessness, and elevated aggravation from technical glitches. It’s almost as if employers decided that some level of inconvenience and hardship needed to replace the daily commute to the office, but that’s admittedly speculation. In any event, rather than account for the increased stress caused by on-camera meetings and adjust expectations accordingly, many employers have expected folks to book back-to-back on-camera meetings in the way they may have previously booked phone calls or in-person meetings. My energy is precious, and I would much rather use it for billable work, research, business development, or personal tasks and errands than allow it to dissipate into the virtual meeting ether. Zoom fatigue truly serves no one.

2. On-camera = wasted electricity. As lead author of Green America’s 2022 Clean Energy Calling report on Energy Justice, I learned a lot about the growing demand for energy to power data centers. Partly responsible for this increased demand is the proliferation of on-camera virtual meetings. It’s a fact that the camera-on function uses far more electricity via demand on data centers than camera-off. Energy demand already far exceeds our ability to sustainably supply it, and the proliferation of 5G will increase this demand further. As with all environmental problems, it is the most marginalized people who suffer the worst impacts; negative economic, health and safety impacts of conventional energy production and climate disruption disproportionately impact women and Black, Latino and Indigenous people across the country (read the report!). For a person working on issues around climate and energy justice, it feels pretty hypocritical to turn on the camera without a good reason. I drive a small, relatively efficient car, turn off lights I’m not using, and avoid running A/C with the windows open, so why would I waste energy to show my face, for work that isn’t about my face?

3. On-camera = self-consciousness. Women are judged on our appearances far more than men, by men and other women. This is not new, but the part of this phenomenon that’s rarely discussed is the ways in which this makes women overly conscious of our own appearances. Mental energy and focus are used, whether subconsciously or not, in considering how you appear to viewers. Is your hair ok? Is your shirt too loud, or showing too much skin? Should you make sure to keep your chin tilted down to hide what might otherwise look like a double chin? And as women, we can intentionally decide not to play into these expectations and show up as ourselves — acne, frizz, bare faces and all — but I promise you someone on the other side of that camera will be busy judging our lack of effort instead of listening to what we are saying. The expectation is real — studies even show that wearing makeup and dressing up is correlated to women making more money. When we do put ourselves together, that might be a distraction too (just look at dress codes in schools aimed at girls wearing anything that might be “provocative” to boys; this extends to the boardroom). Being honest, it can even distract us when we are feeling “camera fly” instead of “camera shy” (thanks to Latasha Neil for that one). Self-consciousness is simply consciousness of the way we appear, and isn’t always negative — but it is always consuming of our attention. I’ve been guilty of looking at myself in the camera and thinking about how much I like the lipstick I’m wearing and need to order more, rather than giving my full attention to the discussion at hand. Why introduce all of this extra baggage for what could have been a phone call?

4. On-camera = stagnation. I think better when I move around. Even in the days that I worked in offices, with landlines, I’d switch calls over to my cell phone and hit the conference room for any call over five minutes because it got my creative and problem-solving juices flowing to pace around the room. My particular method is to pace while I’m speaking, then sit down and take handwritten notes while I’m listening to another speak. It’s what works for me. And it’s definitely awkward on camera. It also helps to alleviate the compression of the spine that happens when you sit for too long — and many of us sit for too long, a problem exacerbated by the virtual meeting trend.

5. On-camera = wasted time and money. To the point about appearance, getting ready takes time and money. Makeup, hair products, a decent sized rotation of “professional” tops; it takes time to do and money to spend. Just, why? I’d rather use the time I would otherwise be “getting ready” to get in a workout, prepare intellectually for my meeting, network on LinkedIn, run an errand, or simply sit in silence on my lanai and exist. I’d rather spend my money on…pretty much anything other than Zoom work clothes and extra makeup.

6. On-camera = outdated office culture. I’ve been working from home for a long time, and calls were always fine. This is unique to me and the other cutting edgers who worked from home offices as early as 2010. We had phone calls, or we met in-person someplace “offsite.” It worked fine. It wasn’t broken, and didn’t need to be fixed. It’s as if the “face time,” clock-in culture was suddenly thrust into our homes in 2020, and it wasn’t at all additive.

7. On-camera = distraction. Again, self-consciousness isn’t unwarranted. I can be distracted by looking at someone with their camera on. I am not immune to passing judgments. I can and have found myself not fully absorbing the content of a person’s comments because I’m looking at their office background (virtual ones too), their choice of top, their hairstyle, etc. Unlike an in-person meeting, where pauses in dialogue come more naturally, people may get up and leave the room to go to the bathroom, and interactions with other office staff or waitstaff create a natural ebb and flow to conversation, on-camera calls are two people staring into each other’s faces and abhorring any moments of silence. In this context, there is really not a lot of space to observe the other person, who — I will remind you — is sitting mostly motionless and confined to a square in front of her face. I’m not at all convinced that the “body language” arguments hold water with respect to camera-on virtual meetings. Which brings me to my next point.

8. On-camera value-add arguments are weak and unconvincing: People love to point out that body language is an important form of communication, and this is absolutely true. But is Zoom communication really representative of authentic body language cues? Google “body language cues on Zoom,” and you’ll come up with a series of instructional blogs on how to craft your body language specifically in the virtual context; why do we need this instruction, and isn’t this just additional emotional labor (see above on that subject)?

Take this article, for example; tip #1 is a series of short and definitive instructions on how to send body language cues in virtual meetings:

“Make constant eye contact.” (Umm, seriously? I challenge you to go sit in front of your spouse, partner, child, roommate, or dog and just maintain constant eye contact while you tell them a story. It’s creepy, exhausting, and unnatural).

“Add a book below your laptop if needed.” (Ok, good plan, but what about when you use a docking station and monitor and you prefer to take notes on your computer while talking, or the conversation necessitates looking at a spreadsheet or other document to talk it through? What if you don’t have good WiFi, so you’re using your phone’s Zoom app to talk, and the only affordable phone stand you could find broke? What about when you haven’t really figured out how to put on a virtual background and the only suitable table has an “unprofessional” background?)

“Looking into the camera is the equivalent of making direct eye contact.” (Yes, and who actually does that? Let’s be honest — are you really going to talk into the tiny dot at the top-middle of your laptop? Or are you going to look at yourself and get flustered when you realize you got toothpaste on your shirt? Or maybe look at the other person and notice they seem decidedly uncomfortable with your constant eye contact, sending you into a spiral of self-doubt and awkwardness?)

“Do not look down, away, or read other things on the screen, as eye motions can be easily detected.” (Well, this reads like a manual on “how to impersonate a cyborg.” Sorry, this is nothing like an in-person meeting and I fail to see the value in training ourselves to turn into this version of ourselves.)

Additionally, when I turn on my camera, the bandwidth required often causes a lag in the conversation. Not only is this awkward, but it leads to both parties being unintentionally interrupted repeatedly. I’m not sure that whatever “cues” given in that context are really useful to give insight into the other party’s position or mood relative to the actual content of the conversation.

I’ve had in-person business meetings in many different venues over the course of my career — conference rooms of huge corporations, Senators’ offices, cubicles, hotel lobbies, hole-in-the-wall lunch spots, fishing boats, airport lounges, high-end restaurants, park benches, poolside, and rushing down the street in DC, to name a few. None of the energetic and interpersonal value of an in-person meeting is embodied or leveraged by these excessively artificial performances we are told are now necessary (and yet, are uncompensated).

When you might catch me on camera:

*Giving a presentation: if I’m hosting a slideshow presentation and then facilitating Q&A, I don’t mind being on camera. In effect, being on camera is the equivalent of giving a presentation (where the presentation of oneself is part of the work). Given the more formal, and intentional focus on appearance as part of the nature of presentations, being on-camera is closer to the posture, preparation and social context of presentation-giving, and I’ll press “on” in that case.

*Launch meetings: when working with a new partner to kick off a new initiative or contract, I don’t mind going on camera. I do like to see others’ smiles, and I like to show off my own friendly face. I think in this limited context, being on-camera can facilitate a bit more intimacy, which is useful in establishing our commitments to move forward together toward our goals. But if I want to get down to real business and dig into strategic content discussions, it’s camera-off and thinking cap on.

*Meetings that are also social connections: similarly, on the occasion that I meet with someone for a Zoom “happy hour” or just to catch up without talking too much business, I don’t mind having my camera on. My orientation to these cases, though, is you get me how you get me. I will sit in my hammock. I may drop the phone to pick up my dog. We are hanging out, and I’m not going to worry about whether my chin looks too big at this angle. This is reserved for people I work with but also regard as friends.

When I simply won’t do it anymore:

*Discovery meetings: spending an hour to get ready for a 15-minute, unpaid camera-on discovery call doesn’t add up for me. I’ve done it several times and it wasn’t a productive use of my time; again, that hour could have been spent doing literally anything else, including paid work. I secured both of my major anchor clients via phone calls, written proposals, and email exchanges. Given the fact that I’m not a model, actress, or any other profession that depends on appearance, there is really no need for prospective clients to view me on camera — you can see in my profile picture on LinkedIn, I look fine. And if I didn’t, that should be fine too.

*Meetings/presentations of more than five people where I’m primarily listening: I didn’t enjoy Hollywood Squares when it was on air, and don’t want to participate in it now. I have never been a person who needs to be observed in order to do the work I’m paid to do; I do it because I have integrity. If I’m listening, I’m listening, and I don’t need to prove it by being observed. While there are certainly people who need that level of oversight to make sure they are actually paying attention, that’s between them and whoever they answer to. I’m all set.

For any meeting where the host states that it is required. Because no.

Sothere you have it. I’ll also note that I put out a poll on LinkedIn questioning whether cameras-on were necessary for an effective meeting; the responses were illuminating.

White people and men made up a plurality of those who opined that cameras-on were necessary or helped more than they hurt, and women across race and Black people made up a plurality of those who thought cameras-on were not necessary, or were more trouble than they were worth — overall 67% of the respondents fell into the “not necessary/more trouble” categories.

I doubt this is coincidence (*this is not scientifically defensible statistical research, folks, and I’m not presenting it as such*). Between the elements of judgment and double consciousness, and the insidious “oversight” flavor of camera-on expectations, I can see why a white, male experience of on-camera Zoom might be far less fraught than that of members of historically marginalized and oppressed groups. One white man (3rd level connection) actually commented, “I require my employees to be on camera for any meetings longer than…” and then went on to claim that they actually preferred that (which I’m sure was honest feedback); my response: “you lost me at ‘I require.’” We’re adults here. Or at least, I am. Call my cell, or better yet — email me!

I really hope this helps folks who resonate with my perspective on the issue and yet, experience resistance to their desire for privacy, movement and the agency to decide when you are “seen.” At the very least, I hope that you feel validated and/or a sense of camaraderie knowing that you’re not the only one out there feeling like this camera-on culture just doesn’t make sense for you. Share with your camera-loving boss, if you dare!

For more intensely formulated opinions on business culture, equity and environmental issues, follow Silleck Consulting Services, LLC on LinkedIn, and look for the launch of our new website soon!

For consulting inquiries (no sales pitches, please), email me at elizabeth@silleckconsultingservices.com.

Sources:

Emotional Labor and Burnout: A Review of the Literature (nih.gov)

The Facts About Zoom Fatigue | UC (ucumberlands.edu)

Turn off that camera during virtual meetings, environmental study says — Purdue University News

Reducing Zoom Data and Bandwidth Use | IT@Cornell

Why Women and New Employees Are More at Risk for Zoom Fatigue, According to New Research | Inc.com

Women’s Greatest Performance; The Internalised Male Gaze — The Everyday (theeverydaymagazine.co.uk)

Wearing Makeup Might Actually Help Women Make More Money | Fortune

Could All Those Zoom Meetings be Bad for Your Health? (acsm.org)

The double standards women face at work every day — ABC Everyday

The Grooming Gap: What “Looking the Part” Costs Women — In These Times