Teams hybrid meeting principles

• Applies to:

  Microsoft Teams

No matter what technology you use, meeting principles are at the core of inclusive meetings. These principles define how participants of a meeting interact with each other, how information is shared, and how to enable effective collaboration. Use the following principles as the basis for the principles you define for your organization. Review your principles with leaders and individual contributors, in-person and remote, with and without disabilities, across your organization.

Each of these principles helps define the meeting best practices outlined in Step 2 - Evangelize meeting best practices.

Equality and inclusivity

All participants, whether in-person or remote, expect and deserve to be heard and to be given a chance to participate in collaboration. Participants with disabilities need access to technology and materials that enable them to fully participate in meetings.

The following Teams features can help support this principle:

• Teams chat for side conversations
• Front Row to view participants in other locations
• Meeting transcripts, live closed captioning, and recordings, for participants with disabilities

Be seen and heard

All participants, but particularly those who are remote, should feel empowered to make their presence known in meetings and contribute to conversations.

The following Teams features can help support this principle:

• In-room companion join so in-room participants can contribute to meeting chat, use reactions, and so on, on their device
• Camera support, including for those in-room, so participants can show their presence and reactions to others
• "Raise hands" reaction so participants can indicate they want to contribute to a discussion
• Reactions to show sentiment for content and discussions

See and listen

All participants, but particularly those who are in-person, should ensure that opportunities are made so that anyone who wants to contribute to a conversation, can.

The following Teams features can help support this principle:

• In-room companion join so in-room participants can follow meeting chat, use reactions, and so on, on their device
• Front Row so those in-room can see remote participants easily
• Live closed captioning for participants with disabilities
• "Raise hands" reaction so all participants can see who wants to contribute to the conversation
• Reactions to see sentiment for content and discussions

Collaborate

All participants should endeavor to use virtual collaboration tools to ensure everyone is able to contribute to discussions.

The following Teams features can help support this principle:

• Breakout rooms for separate group-focused discussions
• Content sharing from devices
• Virtual whiteboards for seamless brainstorming
• Meeting chats for side discussions of content being presented
• Shared notes to keep track of meeting minutes and actions

Request and provide feedback

Open and honest communication between meeting organizers and participants, both during and after a meeting, is critical to successful meetings.

• Meeting chats to make organizers and participants aware of issues in-meeting
• "Raise hands" action to get the attention of organizers or presenters
• Meeting polls to let presenters and organizers ask questions of participants
• Post-meeting surveys to send detailed feedback after the meeting has ended

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