The condition will remain a feature of working life even after employees return to the office
After endless virtual meetings have disappeared over the past year, many workers are surprisingly complaining about ‘Zoom fatigue’. Video conferencing can be exhausting. To stay inside the gaze of the camera, leave the limbs stiff and sore underneath. Looking at your own face on the screen can be bad for self-esteem. And trying to communicate without all the usual visual cues (not least due to time delays) contributes to the “cognitive burden” for employees who are already stressed.
New research suggests that the condition is more common in women than men. A team of researchers led by Géraldine Fauville at the University of Gothenburg surveyed about 10,500 people about their experience with video conferencing during the pandemic. Using their own Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue (ZEF) scale, which assesses exhaustion on various criteria, the researchers found that about 14% of the women in their sample reported feeling very, very tired compared to less than 6% of men.
This may be because women work differently online. The researchers found that although women reported having approximately the same number of meetings per day as men, their meetings were usually longer and had shorter interruptions (perhaps because of the type of work they do or other responsibilities such as childcare). It makes sense that longer periods of staring at a screen without interruption will make women feel more at ease in the eyes. The pressure to maintain a certain appearance can also weigh heavier on women who struggle with body image more frequently. After analyzing the responses of the survey, the researchers found that looking at their own image after a long time had a particularly negative effect on women.
Women are not the only ones who suffer disproportionately from misery with video conferencing. Younger people also reported higher levels of fatigue, as did non-white workers and those who described themselves as more introverted.
Employers will want to keep all of this in mind when offices start reopening and some people sometimes continue to work from time to time. The evidence suggests some simple solutions to Zoom fatigue: use sound calls only where possible, look at co-workers to see how they last and if you have straightened your hair and plucked the spinach from your teeth, disable it from the self-viewing feature .