Americans are secretly cooking during virtual meetings, with one age group leading the way

Your colleagues might be chopping, stirring and whipping up a meal on the other side of your video call, a new survey found.

A national survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults found that 17% of respondents have cooked during a work meeting while their cameras were off, and among Gen Z, the figure rose to 26%.

The poll, conducted by Savanta for AI meeting assistant company Bluedot, also found that 23% have used the bathroom during a meeting with their cameras off, 14% have shopped online and 13% have exercised. Twelve percent, meanwhile, have fallen asleep while their cameras were off, and that figure rose to 30% among Gen Z.

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John Coleman, co-CEO of Atlanta-based Sovereign's Capital, told Fox News Digital he has occasionally resorted to eating lunch during back-to-back meetings and taken conference calls while exercising, with his camera off, but he draws the line at cooking while participating in a call.

Some employees say they have cooked meals during work video meetings, a new survey found. (iStock)

"I'd hate for someone to have a cooking accident while they're on Zoom and not be a full participant in the meeting," Coleman said.

And some of the other behaviors are even riskier, he noted.

"I had a colleague forget that his video was on and take his laptop into the restroom with him actually, which gave a great view of the restroom to everybody on the call, much to his chagrin," Coleman recalled.

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His tip is to treat video calls — on camera or not — as if you were face-to-face. 

"You want to be engaged with the person across from you," he said. If you need to step away and complete a task, he recommends sending a quick message to let the other people on the call know.

Twelve percent of respondents said they had fallen asleep during a camera-off work meeting. (iStock)

Kristen Hadeed, a Texas-based leadership expert and author of "Human Leadership," said her company treats making lunch as "human time" — an everyday need employees should be able to handle. "These moments are part of life, and I want my team to feel empowered to take the time they need while maintaining open communication with the team."

"When a person's time away from work will affect their availability, responsiveness or the team's ability to get work done, I expect that it is communicated so that we are all on the same page," Hadeed added.

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For Catherine Fisher, LinkedIn's vice president of communications and a California-based career expert, the key question is whether multitasking affects someone’s ability to take part.

"The question isn't necessarily, 'Are you doing anything else?' It's, 'Can you still contribute when you’re needed?'" Fisher told Fox News Digital. "If you can't follow the discussion, answer a question or contribute meaningfully, that's when multitasking can start getting in the way of your participation."

Workers may be tempted to multitask during virtual meetings, but experts say it can make it harder to stay engaged. (iStock)

Coleman said part of the problem is how some meetings are organized. 

"A lot of this responsibility, I think, rests on organizations," he said. "We overcrowd meetings. We make them too long."

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When employees feel they are not needed in a discussion, or that a meeting could have been handled by email, they may start multitasking, he said, and that erodes cognitive ability. Coleman recommends keeping virtual calls brief, limiting attendance to those who need to participate and asking whether a video call is even necessary in the first place.

Fisher said the higher share of Gen Z respondents who said they have cooked during meetings may reflect how the pandemic shaped their expectations around work and home life.

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"I wouldn't look at this data and conclude that Gen Z cares less about work," she said. "Many started their careers during the pandemic, at a time when the boundaries between work and home had already been rewritten."

Deirdre Bardolf is a lifestyle writer with Fox News Digital.