Zoom-free Fridays aim to combat video fatigue

Enough is enough. The new head of Citigroup, one of the world's largest banks, told her 210,000 employees last week. Enough Zoom calls.

Jane Fraser, chief executive of Citi, is banning internal video calls on Fridays. She is encouraging workers to set boundaries for a healthier work-life balance－instituting a firm-wide holiday on May 28 called Citi Reset Day as COVID-19 pandemic fatigue takes a toll on employees.

Fraser, who took over the third-largest bank in America this month, announced the changes in an internal memo sent to employees.

While Zoom meetings with clients and regulators will still happen on Fridays, employees will conduct meetings over the telephone to have a break from nonstop videoconferences, she said.

"The blurring of lines between home and work and the relentlessness of the pandemic workday have taken a toll on our well-being," Fraser said."It's simply not sustainable. Since a return to any kind of new normal is still a few months away for many of us, we need to reset some of our working practices."

Other US companies have also put a limit on Zoom calls.

In August, SailPoint Technology Holdings Inc in Texas banned its employees from having video chats between 10 am and noon every Tuesday and Thursday. "Zoom fatigue is real," said Abby Payne, chief people officer of the Austin company which has 1,000 employees.

Initiatives launched

Last summer the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, an industry trade group in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, implemented "quiet Fridays" where virtual meetings are banned, and employees are encouraged to keep emails and phone calls to a minimum.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center initiated "Focused Wednesday Afternoons" for its 22,000 employees－a midweek break from any technology-based communication, be it video calls or phone calls.

Clorox Co, the Oakland, California, maker of household staples, experimented with a Zoom-free "quiet day" last summer. Employees' reaction was so positive the company has instituted monthly quiet days and will tell workers to stay off Zoom the week of Thanksgiving.

And even Zoom, whose business boomed during the pandemic, is telling employees to take a break.

"We certainly understand that being on video all day long can be challenging. We spend a lot of time working with our own internal employees to help them understand how to optimize and take a break during the day," CFO Kelly Steckelberg told CNBC."I think what we're all suffering from is that break we used to get just walking from room to room. Now you jump from meeting to meeting, and it takes literally seconds."

Laura Dudley, a behavior analyst at Northeastern University in Boston, told The Wall Street Journal that reducing remote meetings is critical to avoiding worker burnout.

Constant eye contact with colleagues in remote meetings, seeing yourself on the screen and sitting long hours in home furniture not intended for office work create "a combination of mental fatigue as well as physical fatigue", she said.