How Long to Wait for a Video-Conference Call

I had a very important video-conference call this afternoon but got stuck in traffic and couldn't get on the call until 7 minutes after it started. As the call was a one-on-one with someone, that is much too long to wait. Fortunately the person I needed to talk with stuck around that long and waited for me. We had a great call but I felt miserable for being so tardy and apologized profusely.

This brings up the question in the title of this post. How long should you wait for a video-conference call? If it is just two people, 5 minutes is sufficient. If the person doesn't show up by then, you can easily reschedule. The question becomes much trickier when it is a group call. The easy case is if there are a lot of people and you are not required to present anything. In that case, you can show up at any time. Just be sure to keep your camera off and come into the call muted. This is similar to sneaking in the side door and is perfectly acceptable provided the other people in the call can assume you were in another meeting that ran late.

So what about the cases in between? Realistically you should always do your best to be on-time to meetings. It shows that you value everyone's time. Sometimes that isn't possible and you must be late. In those cases, being 5 minutes late is about as far as you can go. Sometimes the meeting will start without you but if you have to be caught up on items you missed, it wastes other people's time.

I felt really bad about being late to my meeting today and am glad the person I met with could forgive me. At a time when most people can work from home, I felt bad giving the excuse that I got caught in traffic even though that is what happened. Now I just need to make sure I am early to the next meeting we have together.