I'm heavily in favor of remote-WFH who prefers async communication, but this is a multi faceted problem. What do you do when the employees who actually need to be engaged in the problem use WFH to slack off and not prepare for meetings?
This might touch a nerve, but some tech workers are grown up man-children with little to no discipline (I'm sure everyone here knows some) since they got through life by having adults (parents, guardians, teachers, bosses, coaches, mentors) keep them accountable for their work/progress, and once the move form the office to home happened, they stopped doing much work and treated it as a vacation, since they didn't like their job much anyway and they were just there for the paycheck, and as their boss/colleagues couldn't see them slack off the whole day it felt like they weren't accountable to anyone anymore.
I've already seen several people let go due to this.
Maybe take advantage of the benefits of remote: Have 2 meetings instead of one, with one being a 'pre-meeting' to make sure everyone is prepared, with a few hours between them. Keep them short. Nobody is going to complain that you re holding up the conference room.
>Have 2 meetings instead of one, with one being a 'pre-meeting' to make sure everyone is prepared
So we solve the zoom-meeting fatigue problem by introducing even more meetings and disruptive context switching where the bosses/leads need to take time out of their already busy schedule to act as baby-sitters and check up on their "babies" because some people lack self discipline and can't self organize when someone isn't constantly watching over their shoulder?
Sounds like micromanagement hell, count me out. I don't know any tech company where this is the norm and wouldn't want to be in one, not as a worker, nor as a boss.
Everywhere I worked you were trusted to be accountable for your work and if a higher-up had to keep checking in on you regularly, you were on your way out.
Generally when you're having meetings about meetings, you're crossing the line into a meeting-dominated culture. History and common sense tell us that meetings may be where some decisions are made, but they are not where actual IC work gets done.
This might touch a nerve, but some tech workers are grown up man-children with little to no discipline (I'm sure everyone here knows some) since they got through life by having adults (parents, guardians, teachers, bosses, coaches, mentors) keep them accountable for their work/progress, and once the move form the office to home happened, they stopped doing much work and treated it as a vacation, since they didn't like their job much anyway and they were just there for the paycheck, and as their boss/colleagues couldn't see them slack off the whole day it felt like they weren't accountable to anyone anymore.
I've already seen several people let go due to this.