Increase employee productivity and improve video chat meeting participation with this one horrifying secret involving mannequin hands!

Background:

Thanks to modern technology, it’s possible for many meetings to be conducted over video chat.

The Issue:

Frequently, it’s not really necessary for a participant in a meeting to be paying attention: that person’s time could be better spent doing actual work, or writing emails.

But it is important for the person to look like they’re definitely paying attention, and not typing on their computer.

Proposal:

Here’s a method for a person to seem like they could not possibly be distracted by something else, while still freeing them to do work and ignore the meeting.

Specifically, it relies on the fact that if a person in a meeting has both of their hands visible on the video chat, it means they can’t be casually browsing the Internet at the same time (Figure 1).

***Fig. 1:*** We can tell that this other meeting participant is definitely paying attention to the meeting, because they’re holding a coffee cup in both hands, and thus, definitely aren’t typing or using the mouse.

However, the “hands” seen in Figure 1 are actually artificial mannequin hands that match the user’s skin tone! The true situation is shown in Figure 2.

***Fig. 2:*** Other meeting participants believe that the user above is intently listening while holding a cup of coffee, but they are actually seeing a pair of artificial hands (indicated by the arrow). This intrepid employee is diligently adding value to the company, instead of wasting time at a 30-person meeting.

PROS: Increases employee efficiency.

CONS: By mitigating the “too many meetings” problem, this technical solution might lessen the social pressure to reduce superfluous meetings.