Checking emails, eating and falling asleep on a video call

Over 50% of Indian business people admit to having checked or written mails when on a video conference call, while a shade under 50% surf the internet. By way of comparison, over 42% of Brits check or write emails, 35% have doodled and 3% have even fallen asleep while taking part in a conference call, according to an interesting study on the human aspect of video conferencing from communications provider Cable & Wireless Worldwide.

The year 2010 will always be considered the year when cloud computing and unified communications went mainstream. The recession saw enterprises cut down on travel costs and manage meetings through video conferencing. Frost & Sullivan recently noted that sales and marketing activities in the video conferencing sector remained active last year with high definition (HD) systems bringing in more business With the economy picking up, the video conferencing market is likely to benefit as more companies invest in video conferencing solutions.

But that?s the business and serious side of the technology. The recent study spanning five countries across India, the UK, Singapore, Germany and Spain has thrown some interesting tidbits. Here’s a quick sampler: Indians spend more attention on a business video conference than any another country and the attention span of Indians (30 minutes) is higher than most countries apart from Singapore (37 minutes). 96.4% of Indians said that ?I am more likely to make business decisions if I am able to see the person /people I am dealing with.?

Shali Thilakan, managing director ? India, Cable & Wireless Worldwide says, ?This result in particular was very interesting to us. It is generally believed that Indians typically like to do business with people they know. Someone they can see; or meet with in person. There is also the ?trust factor? that Indians get once they see the person they are dealing with. And this all comes easy on video conferencing.?

That’s not all. Of people one interacts with face to face, close to 55% are okay interaction with a doctor, while over 30% would prefer that mode to interact with their employees. In the UK, the concentration and focus on telephone conference calls begins to wane after an average of 23 minutes, but on a video conference call or in a face-to-face meeting, the attention span rockets to 35 minutes, putting Brits on par with Singaporeans who report the longest concentration time on a video conference call at 37 minutes. Interestingly, on regular one to one phone calls the average focus in the UK is just nine minutes, a figure the Germans put to shame with the ability to concentrate for over 16 minutes. On an average, most Indians lose focus after 30 minutes of attending a video conference meeting.

Interestingly, an overwhelming 98.4% Indians make more of an effort into appearance to make a good impression and felt that it is crucial to maintain a positive body language. Thilakan says, ?Indians pay a lot of attention to positive body language, wearing smart business attire, tiding their hair or being clean shaven. Interestingly, males are twice as likely to look more serious than females.?

Another interesting fact which was displayed by the report was that Indians, by way of comparison with other countries, are more bullish on video conferencing being utilised more regularly in the workplace in 2011.