Dear Administrative Professionals:

Virtual meetings have been around for many years and supporting business to meet faster at any place and any time. They save time, logistics, and travel costs. After the COVID-19 Pandemic, not only have meetings become virtual, but also most of the work is now demanding more availability and reliability on technologies to ensure business continuity, where people need to communicate and meet more frequently and effectively.

Regardless of the meeting's type, number of participants, subject, and priority, here are top 10 essentials to do for your next virtual meetings: 

1. Ensure that you are well skilled with the virtual meeting software used by your company. 
2. Understand your company's procedures, guidelines, and protocols for internal and external attendees. 
3. Be aware of your attendees physical locations and time zones. 
4. Pre-specify and agree on the roles of the organizer, facilitator, and moderator of the meeting. 
5. Make use and apply meeting engagement strategies and ideas. 
6. Encourage utilizing videos to see attendees' faces for better communication. 
7. Make IT support available during the meeting in case of technology issues. 
8. Reduce the meeting agenda and if necessary, break the long meetings to shorter meetings to reduce stress. 
9. Allow enough breaks between virtual meetings. 
10. Use a proper screen background image depending on your venue environment and meeting type. 

With more ongoing advanced technologies, you need to keep yourself updated and acquainted with new features and ideas to sustain meetings' productivity and efficiency.

Stay productive with excellence!