FRANKIE DeGROOT | News | CONTACT

In a sign of the times, a despondent Anthony Crossley, Sales Manager at Betoota Engineering and Instrumentation, has replaced the traditional weekly meeting that could have been an e-mail with a 45-minute videoconference.

“It’s just not the same” a clearly disappointed Anthony said, staring at the skin on the top of his cold coffee.

“Everybody loves having a weekly meeting; there is always 100% attendance, and not just because it’s compulsory. I get up there and say ‘hey guys, sales are up 1.5% this quarter and the Sorenson account is on Credit Hold on and it’s Mark’s birthday so there is a caramel mud cake in the kitchen’.”

“In a meeting, it’s really easy to draw those 3 points out because everyone wants to take credit or pass blame so there is lots of discussion. It’s hard to make those 3 points last 45 minutes in a videoconference; although it’s easy to make the videoconference last more than 20 minutes because that’s how long it takes to get my microphone to work properly.”

Sales Rep Harley Topper said the new format was proving popular with the sales team.

“You can really tell morale has improved around here. Ever since the Videoconference that should have been a meeting that should have been an e-mail started everyone has been in a much better mood and more work is getting done,”he said.

“The trick is to join the meeting, then turn off your mic so he can’t hear what you really think. Then turn off the headphones so you can’t hear him either. I just read the minutes afterwards to see if I missed out on anything. But the last videoconference was apparently about why we are going through more black whiteboard markers than red whiteboard markers, and if anybody knew where the spoons from the kitchen went, so pretty confident I didn’t miss out on anything important”.

